


A star so bright

by SecondStarOnTheLeft



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Stardust - Neil Gaiman
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-31
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-01-17 18:08:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1397527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecondStarOnTheLeft/pseuds/SecondStarOnTheLeft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An encounter at the Faerie Market has consequences beyond little Sansa's mismatched ears.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The market at the wall

The market on the other side of the Wall was something Cat had only ever known as a boring day spent minding Lysa and Edmure while Dad went off and did whatever it was the adults did over there.

Wall - the village, not the Wall - was terribly boring on those days, but this year, Cat was seventeen and therefore allowed to go to the market as well. 

On the first morning of the market, Cat packed a little lunch for herself, and one for Dad, and made sure there was plenty of food for Lysa and Ed, both of whom were sulking magnficently - Lysa because she was being left behind, Ed because he was being left behind with Lysa.

Then, rather than waiting for any of the girls who only really wanted to go because they'd heard that there were strange fairy-men to flirt with, Cat set off for the Wall and the market beyond, swinging her picnic in a basket that hung from the crook of her elbow and singing to herself as she went.

 

* * *

 

He never did tell her his name, but his eyes were the soft, dark grey of a stormcloud and his ears were pointed and tufted and sleek silver-grey like a wolf's.

Cat had never thought herself a silly girl, but when she missed one monthly and then two and then three, she realised that she was a very silly girl indeed.

A letter came four months after Sansa was born, addressed to Cat's daughter in unfamiliar writing and delivered by the guard from the Wall. Cat never did say who Sansa's father was, but between that letter and Sansa's left ear (sleek and silver-grey and slightly pointed), well, it wasn't difficult for anyone to discern that the girl had fairy blood in her.


	2. A bright, moonless night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa knew Mam would hate that she thought of it like that - mostly that she thought of herself as a freak, not that she knew Harry wouldn't want her - but it was  _true._

The problem with being not only illegitimate but also a freak, as Sansa saw it, was that she knew full well Harry would never want to marry her. 

Sansa knew Mam would hate that she thought of it like that - mostly that she thought of herself as a freak, not that she knew Harry wouldn't want her - but it was  _true._ Everyone in the whole of Wall knew that Sansa was half a monster from the Market, what with her furry ear, and everyone knew that the monster that'd fathered her had never been seen again, not since he'd left a basket at the crossing point and asked that it be delivered to Mam when Sansa was just a baby.

So, Sansa was illegitimate, and she was a freak. She'd known this all her life - she'd never been let forget it - and had grown into the identity of  _bastard_ just as hard as she had  _freak._

That didn't mean she didn't wish Harry Hardyng would pay her more attention, though.

Harry was very beautiful - he was tall and slim, with cornsilk-blonde hair and sunny sky-blue eyes, and masses and masses of freckles. He was also charming, and sweet, and he was one of the only people who never passed remark about Sansa's ear or lack of father.

Sansa  _hated_ her ear. It was pointed and grey and furred, like a dog's (Mam said a wolf's, but Sansa thought that she was only saying that to be kind). That was why the girls at school had always called her  _bitch,_ even before they'd truly understood what a horrible word that was. That was why, even still, some of her old classmates yipped and barked while she was serving them in the shop.

That was Sansa's lot. The bastard half-dog shop girl who spent half her time dreaming and the rest of it being laughed at. 

 

* * *

 

"You have such beautiful hair," Mam sighed, guiding Sansa to sit down in front of her. "Much lovelier than mine."

Sansa wasn't sure about that - Mam's hair was thicker and curlier than her own, and would have hidden the dog ear. Sansa would have liked something that could keep her ear from peeping through her hair, especially considering it was dark grey, and her hair was so red.

"Lysa has invited us for dinner," Mam went on. "Won't that be nice? She says Robin's new medicine is working wonderfully."

Sansa hummed non-committally - Mam's sister Lysa and Lysa's son Robin were the only family they had in Wall, now that Granddad was dead and both Brynden and Edmure were in the army. Sansa didn't much like her aunt, who held it over Mam that  _her_ son had been born while she was married. Sansa knew that she was Mam's shame, but no one in the family had ever made her feel it except for Aunt Lysa.

Dinner with Lysa and Robin was always strained and uncomfortable. Lysa always made fun of Mam and Robin was always insufferable, if sweet in his own way. 

"She says Harry will be there," Mam offered. "You and Harry get along well, don't you?"

That was the worst of knowing Harry would never take her seriously - he was always absolutely darling to her, as lovely as he was to any of the  _nice_ girls from town. It made it feel as though he was taking her seriously, which only made the sting afterwards all the worse. 

Harry was the only one who talked about her coming from across the wall without it being cruel. He seemed curious, always curious, about what might be over there. Sansa had never been at the Market, not even once, but Harry had told her all sorts of stories about it, and had asked if she thought that this stallholder or this traveller or this singer - because Sansa had a lovely singing voice, and she knew it, and Harry knew it - might be her father.

Sansa didn't know. All she knew was that her father  _might_ have dog's ears, and that he probably was a fairy of some sort. Mam had tried, once or twice, to try and speak of him, but Sansa hadn't wanted to listen. If he was a good fairy, then surely he would have done more than send her a letter?

 

* * *

  

A man Sansa might have considered a good fairy lay dying far away in Faerie, in a high tower in the high North. 

Rickard Stark, Lord of the Winterhold, had two sons and a daughter and a grandson as well by his bedside, but still he wept. Still he mourned. 

"Ned?" he asked, looking about him with rheumy, tear-filled eyes. "Where is Ned?"

"Still missing, Pop," his eldest son said, pressing his hand and wishing he had other words. "We continue the hunt, but..."

"A stag is easy quarry for a pack of wolves," Rickard grumbled. "Brandon, bold Brandon, why have you not scoured the whole of Faerie in the hunt for your brother?"

"We have, Pop," the daughter said, her eyes as grey as the storms that lingered ever to the west, one of the hallmarks of their kin. "We've searched up and down and over and back, and we cannot find any hint of Ned anywhere, Pop, we  _cannot."_

"Lya speaks true," the youngest brother agreed from his place at the foot of the bed. "We have done everything in our power to find Ned, Pop. There is nothing more within our power."

"Not even yours, child-of-my-child?" the old man said, holding out a hand to the boy-who-would-be-a-man standing by the window. "Not even with your strange gifts? There is naught to be done by a man with a song all his own?"

"I have searched, Grandfather," Jon said, desolate to disappoint the grandfather who had helped shape him. "I have done all I can."

The tears were misty now, and the voice was weak.

"There is one thing that I might do," Rickard whispered, "here at the end of me. Help me to the window."

They carried him, Brandon and Benjen, and held him safe between them as he watched the sky, bright with stars but without a moon. It was good that there was no moon tonight, that the wolf in their blood was quiet on his last night on earth, Rickard thought absently, as he brought his hand to the heavy chain that lay around his neck. There hung a stone of hard, sharp grey, as grey as any of their eyes, which came away easily when Rickard set his fingers to it.

"This stone," he said, feeling stronger in this moment, this final span of breaths, than he had in many moons.  _Oh, Lyarra,_ he thought,  _would that I might have taken leave of all our sweet babes._ "This stone is called to our blood, you know."

His sons and daughter and grandson said nothing, but Rickard knew his family. He could see the hope in their eyes.

The colour leached from the stone as he raised it high.

"Follow the stone," he said, watching as it sparked and sparkled and fled into the sky, and as a star in the faraway Rose blossomed and burned and fell. "And bring Ned home."

 

* * *

 

 

"Tell me, Sansa," Harry said, looking at her curiously. "What do you want more than anything in the world?"

 _You,_ she wanted to say, but instead she pursed her lips and leaned forwards over the railing. She'd always liked it up here, in the upstairs sitting room in Aunt Lysa's house. There was a balcony where her and Harry often retreated to get away from Lysa - and guilty as Sansa felt about leaving Mam alone with Lysa, well, she couldn't pretend to be sorry of the time spent with Harry.

"To know who I am," she said at last, surprising herself with how true it was. "To know that there's more for me than just working in the shop forever."

"My poor shopgirl," Harry said, looking almost fond. "Do you know what you ought to do to find who you are, Sansa?"

"What's that, Harry?" she said, rolling her eyes. "Go on a grand adventure? A quest to find my father?"

"I was going to say follow that star," he said, pointing out and up toward the star-bright sky above her. One single, lonely star was falling from somewhere in the Rose, and Sansa followed it with her eyes all the way down to where it landed, far on the other side of the wall.


	3. The road goes ever on

The following morning, Sansa made a pot of tea and set it down on the table between herself and Mam.

"I want to cross the Wall," she said, and Mam sighed. It struck Sansa then that Mam looked old, even though she wasn't - not even forty, really, but being the mother to a bastard girl took it's toll. Sansa had just never noticed it before, and she hated her feckless father all the more because of it. Mam deserved happiness, every happiness, and he'd stolen her chance for it. "I want to know where I come from."

Mam frowned a little, which she always did when she was nervous, and then she stood up. It seemed to Sansa as if her mother had gotten very small, very quickly, and that made her sad.

"Wait here," Mam said. "I have to fetch something to show you first."

Mam returned with a basket Sansa recognised without needing to check - it was the same basket that had been left at the crossing point, just gone eighteen years ago.

Sansa knew the basket well. It was the only thing she had of her father, aside from her ugly dog ear. She hated that basket, because it was part of what made her a freak.

She half-wondered why she was even going across the Wall ( _to impress a boy who'll never want to marry me if I don't give him reason,_ a rude part of her said, and she ignored it very firmly). She forgot to wonder even that much when Mam took a letter, still sealed, from under the soft blanket that Sansa had never seen lifted.

It was a tiny little basket, Sansa noticed for the first time, just like Wall was a tiny little village, just like her job at the shop was a tiny little inconsequential _nothing_ that she hated with everything in her. 

She took the letter.

_To my sweet daughter,_

_I know not if ever we will meet, and that is my fault, not your mother's. I beg that you be kind to her - I was, and remain, the one at fault throughout all of this. She was and is as much an innocent as you._

_I do not know if I will ever be so lucky as to even see you, little one, but I hope you have your mother's look. You'll likely have my luck, after all, and you'll need a face and heart as good as hers to counter that._

_Know that, had it been my choice, I would have followed her to Wall. I would have known you, known you both, as well as you deserve. I behaved shamefully, and can never make up for that, but I hope you can believe that this was never my intention._

_If ever you wish to find your kin beyond Wall, cross into the meadow on the Faerie side and think of home. You will know the way. You will always know your way on this side of the wall, I think, for you are my blood, and blood always tells._

_I have little to offer you in my current state but three things. One is the advice I have already given you, and with it the hope that someday, someday you will wish to find our family. The second, I hope your mother will give to you long before you read this, a glass winter rose - I do not know if they grow in your Wall, but they are a symbol of my home, and I would have you know some little of it._

_Third is a warning: You are more precious than you will ever understand, little one. There will be many in Faerie who seek to do you harm just because of the blood that flows in your veins, so I beg of you, if you cross the wall, trust only those who feel of home. You will understand when the time comes._

_With the greatest of love,_

_your father._

Sansa touched a fingertip to the little blue glass flower she'd worn tucked into her petticoat for as long as she could remember. Mam had never mentioned where she'd gotten it, and because it matched both their eyes so well, she'd assumed it was an heirloom, that it had belonged to Mam's mother, or to her grandmother even. 

Then again, she didn't think Mam would have made her swear to never show anyone the little flower if it was an heirloom. Likely Mam would have wanted her to wear it proudly, to defy anyone who'd call Sansa anything other than Tully.

So it had come from her father. She didn't know how to feel about that.

"Well," Mam said, her voice shaking just a little. "I take it you'll need a good pair of stout walking boots, then?"

 

* * *

 

 

His leg ached worse than anything he'd ever felt, because he'd landed on it when he'd fallen.

The damned great jewel that had knocked him out of the sky - colourless and dressed in wispy, insubstantial silver - had settled about his neck, on a long chain that wouldn't break or be removed, no matter what he did. He tucked it under his shirt and tried to forget about it. 

He tried to stand up next, and said  _"Fuck,"_ very quietly before pushing himself so that he was standing, albeit shakily.

He hobbled as far toward the trees as he could, and then gave up and decided to sit down a while instead of pressing on. The trees would still be there later, he knew, and glancing up at the stars still glittering way above him in the sky, the knowledge that he'd still be here, too, settled like a stone in his gut.

 

* * *

 

 

The men at the wall had given Sansa an odd look, but then she'd turned her head a little and Old Frey had pointed at her ear. She'd let Mam plait her hair up away from her face, so her horrid ear was plain to see, and Old Frey had always been ready to make fun of her for it, because he'd hated Granddad so.

"She's one of them freaks," he said. "Let her go back to her kind, heh."

Sansa had hugged Mam tight, hefted the straps of her knapsack higher onto her shoulders, and stepped into another world.

It didn't much  _feel_ like another world, was the thing. The grass in the meadow felt much the same as it did at home, and the flowers on the trees when she followed the path through the copse on top of the hill smelled the same. The sunlight was warm, the breeze was cool, and the sky was blue.

She didn't see what the fuss was over, really.

She walked all day, chewing on one of the big round honey oatcakes Mam had tucked into her knapsack and sipping water - the road followed the river, more or less, and the water was fast-running and clear as a bell, so she didn't worry about drinking it overmuch, especially when everything else seemed so harmless.

It cooled as dusk fell, and Sansa found herself a sheltered little huddle of trees, and set up her little tent there. She made certain she still had her glass flower, ate another oatcake and some dried pork, finished her flask of water, and went to sleep.

She hoped tomorrow would be more exciting.

 

* * *

 

The castle was dark.

It had once been bright, golden and perfect, in a lost age where those within had reined as kings and queen, a rule fraught with horrors few now dared speak of.

But those days were lost, mercifully, so the castle was dark and hung with cobwebs where once there had been cloth-of-gold.

There were three within. Old beyond measure, and near as ruined as their home, they were, and as dark in their hearts as the castle had become.

"A  _star_ ," croaked the youngest, his voice failed and near to broken, just like everything else about the place. "What a treat this is!"

The next eldest laughed, rough and hoarse, and slapped his hand against his brother's shoulder.

"Let us decide who of us ought to go after it," he said, and together they walked to the table at the far end of the hall where the eldest stood, the gloss of her false hair adding to her decrepitude more than it took away.

The creature they split - a stoat, the youngest thought, although one of his eyes was blind so he could not be sure - squealed, but only for a moment.

"I have a kidney!" he said, holding it high so they might look.

"The liver," his brother said, and their sister laughed.

"I have his heart," she said triumphantly. "And I will need what is left of the last star, brothers dear, so I might find the new."

Once they had been kings and queen, but now they were bedtime stories. Naughty children were warned to behave, lest the Lannisters take them and gobble up their hearts.

 

* * *

 

 

Sansa's neck was stiff when she woke up the following morning, but she found some strawberries nearby her little camp and was it quite jolly humour as she packed up and set off. The meanness and rudeness of the girls in Wall seemed worlds away under the bright spring sun, and she sang as she walked along, not knowing where she was going but understanding that she'd reach her star so she could bring it back and prove to Harry that she was just as worthy as any of the other girls, thank you very much.

So she sang, and even skipped now and then, and stopped for lunch and to dip her feet in the river around noon. Her boots were giving her the most terrible blisters on her heels, and she'd packed them tight to keep her feet from slipping, but they stung all the same.

"Hello," said a hairy lady as she sat down beside Sansa. "Care to share lunch?"

Sansa blinked in surprise, but then she smiled. "If you wouldn't mind the company," she said, and she tied the laces of her boots together and slung them over her shoulder before getting up and following the lady to a little campsite on the other side of the road. It was tucked behind a circle of bushes, and Sansa wouldn't have noticed it if the lady hadn't shown her it was there.

"I have some lovely mushrooms nearly hot," the lady said with a toothy smile. "What do you have to add to the pot?"

Sansa added her dried pork, and crumbled up one of her oatcakes, and they made a lovely stew, and the lady waved her compliments away with one big hairy paw of a hand.

They walked a ways together, and made camp together that night, and the hairy lady made another stew in the evening and sweet porridge in the morning, and set a parcel down in front of Sansa as they broke camp.

"You tell your father when you see him," she said, "that my debt is paid now, yes?"

"I don't know who my father is," Sansa said. "What makes you think that you do?"

The hairy lady just smiled, reached up and tucked Sansa's hair behind her ear - her dog ear - and smiled.

"There's wolves all over these parts," she said, "and we all know your father, wolf-girl."

 

* * *

 

 

"We're being led miles from anywhere," Lyanna said, more than a little frustrated, as Jon recovered his shape. "How likely is it that Ned be in the Westlands? Truly, Brandon, how likely?"

Brandon was everyone ounce as annoyed over it all as Lyanna, but Benjen shook his head, arms folded and face serious.

"Father told us to follow the pull of the stone," Ben said. "He knew the old magics better than any of us except for-"

He hesitated a moment, but decided that it was long past time to worry about upsetting his sister.

"Except for Ned," he said, because it was true. Ned's gifts had always been quieter than any of the rest of theirs, but they'd been there all the same. Likely he'd have been able to puzzle this all out in half a day, but Ben couldn't make head nor tail of it, and he knew Lya and Bran weren't much better off. As for Jon, well, Jon was torn between two sides of himself so strongly it was a wonder he didn't just split down the middle.

No, the irony of it all was that they needed Ned to find Ned, and Ben would've laughed at that if Lya hadn't looked so bloody heartbroken.

 

* * *

 

 

The parcel the hairy lady had left for Sansa contained fresh clothes - boots as soft as butter, strange trousers that fit Sansa better than trousers ought fit a woman, in her experience, a long shirt and a coat, and a belt that she thought should sit over the shirt to make it fit her rather better.

She plaited her hair fresh, and twisted it around her head and pinned it in place, because it was getting windy and she didn't fancy having it whipping all over the place, and had she stopped to think, she might have thought herself to look like one of the adventurers in Sweetrobin's books.

The parcel had also contained a black candle, bound around with a note.

_Burn me,_ it said,  _and think of your heart's desire._

Sansa told herself that her heart's desire was to find where she came from, but the star Harry had shown her sneaked in right at the end, just as she should've known it would, and she didn't know what to think when the whole world  _turned._


	4. The past rears its head, the future beckons

Lyanna had never accepted her family's insistence that Ned's disappearance hadn't been her fault.

One of the Stormlords had thought to marry her, once upon a time, and hadn't liked it when she said no. Pop hadn't liked him, and what could a Stormlord have to offer a daughter of the Winterhold, anyway? Their power was elemental, came and went with the weather, and they were dangerous besides. No, Lyanna hadn't wanted to marry a Stormlord, and she had told Robert as much.

She had never been sure whether her refusal of his suit or her having an affair with a Dragon had been his tipping point, but either way, within six months of Jon's birth, Ned had disappeared. He had gone to the icefall on the eastern slope of the Winterhold to collect glass roses for her to decorate the nursery, and had disappeared in a clap of thunder that had shaken the whole mountain. 

So it had been Lya's fault, whether the family would agree or not. Robert had set a trap for her, because she had always been teased for the time she spent in the glass meadows by the icefalls, and Ned had fallen into it because, being Ned, he had sought to be kind and do something good for her. 

That was why she was less interested in tracing the stone than in tracing the weather patterns. The Stormlords followed the storms, and Jon could read weather patterns when he was using his father's abilities.

"We should divide our resources," she said, pulling the straps on her boots tight and refusing to look at Ben. He'd understand why she was doing this, and she didn't want him to shame her into staying with Brandon. "I know that the stone is supposedly our best chance for finding Ned, but there  _are_ other ways. Pop forbid me from following them, but-"

"Pop is dead," Bran agreed quietly. "You want to go stormchasing, Lya? Then you do it safely. You go through Jon and his father's family. You find the Dragons, and you hunt on their terms."

Jon folded his arms, tucked his chin to his chest, and looked so much like Ned that it stung.

"I'll send a message to my aunt," he said. "She won't let Mother hunt with her, but she might let me. I'll see what I can do."

 

* * *

 

 

Cersei stretched right up onto her toes, her hands high over her head, and breathed deep.

She hadn't been away from the Rock for more than an hour in years, since their last battle with the Dragons, the fight which had nearly killed them. With the last of their last star - the very cause of that battle, which was almost funny, now, considering all but one of the Dragons was dead, one true Dragon and the half-breed wolf-boy. 

A good end for them. Cersei would hunt down the last of the Dragons and as many Wolves as she could lay hands on once she had the new star. The Lannisters had ruled long before those upstarts, and they would rule long after them. 

The star's trail was oddly faint, tainted by something else, and Cersei could almost tell what that something else was. It was like an itch on the back of her tongue, something familiar that stuck in her throat but that she couldn't quite place.

_South-west of here,_ Tyrion had said,  _the star fell in the forest south-west of here, and is injured. It will be grateful to see someone coming to its aid. Bring it here with promises of comfort, sister, and we will all feast._

If Cersei had her way, only she and Jaime would feast. Perhaps with Jaime's missing hand, he would not be strong enough to protect Tyrion if she chose to dispose of him. The thought thrilled her, and she urged her little cart toward the forest. She loathed that she had only a  _goat,_ of all things, and that it had come from a farmboy with skinny legs, well, that was hardly ideal. 

The forest was sparse, this far out, the land on either side of the road clear of trees for ten, maybe twenty yards in places, and Cersei's little cart trundled along in breezy sunshine such as she had not known since last her hair had been golden.

She had missed her hair, these long years. It felt good to have the weight of it on her shoulders, to feel it stirring in the wind as her little goat pulled her deeper into the forest. Long hair and high, firm breasts and long, smooth arms and legs, oh, it was so sweet to be as beautiful as she deserved to be. 

She saw the little twist of smoke before she crested the hill, and then the vile yellow caravan with the vicious looking guard dog.

And the vast man with the black beard, who watched her coming as though he wished to devour her whole. 

"Call me Bob," he said. "Sit, rest your feet - share a meal."

Cersei sat, and she crossed her legs and watched him stare openly at all that was exposed by the rise of her skirts, and she smiled. It was good to be wanted, as she had not been wanted in so long.

He shared his meal - a rabbit, spit-roasted and so hot the juices she licked from her fingers burned her tongue - and then began to talk.

"So, witch," he said cheerfully, leaning back against the caravan and patting his dog between its sharp, tufted ears. "What brings you through these parts?"

"Oh, nothing of interest," she said idly, twirling the ends of her hair around her fingers. "A star, south-west of here. I seek it for my brothers and I, to restore us to what we once were."

"A star, is it?" he said, sitting forward suddenly. "Oh, I should like a star. Imagine how that might help... Yes, I should very much like a star. The power I could wield then-"

"You will do no such thing," Cersei said, understanding suddenly what the sharp tang had been to the meat. "Oh, you will pay dearly for feeding  _me_ nimbus grass, Robert Baratheon."

He blinked at her. "What did you call me?"

"I know well who you are, Robert Baratheon," she said, rising to her feet and burning with anger that he had  _dared_ to drug her. "A Stormlord who reached above him, who hates the Dragons and thinks a  _star_ might give him the strength to challenge them. A  _fool_ who thinks he has been wronged."

He watched her, and the fear in his eyes was something she had missed, something she relished.

"You will never find the star," she said, leaning forward and tracing the line of his jaw with the tips of her fingers. "You will never even see it or hear it, foolish man. That star belongs to the Lannisters, and a low creature such as yourself is no match for  _me._ "

His dog howled in her wake, and Cersei felt quite satisfied with herself as her goat pulled her closer to her and Jaime's star.

 

* * *

 

The man Sansa landed on top of was the prettiest man she had ever seen. 

"I'm terribly sorry," she said, pushing herself off him and rolling to her feet, just as she'd learned from one of the travellers who'd stayed in Wall for the Fair last year. "Oh, goodness me, I really am sorry! Are you quite alright? Is there anything I can do to help-"

"Unless you know a way for me to travel thousands of mile directly upward," he said, gripping his left leg tight in one hand and pushing himself up with the other, "then no, madam, I am afraid that there is nothing you can do to help me."

She clenched her hands tight at her sides, wondering how she might make up for knocking him flat on his back and landing on top of him. 

"I was wondering, sir," she said, "I might be able to reset your leg - it will hurt at first, but it would help, I think. It might make it easier to walk."

He hesitated, and then nodded.

"And I was wondering," she said hesitantly, "if you might have seen a star fall somewhere near here?"

He blinked at her, laughed, and held out his hand.

"My name is Willas," he said, "and if you seek a star, madam, then this is your lucky day."


	5. Lannie the Innkeeper

Sansa tore her petticoats into long strips and set about using some of them to bind the long, straight sticks she'd found to the beautiful young man's twisted left leg in lieu of a splint. She ignored his grunts and hisses of pain as she turned his ankle, and reminded herself that it wasn't as though she was going to need the petticoats, after all, not when the trousers the hairy lady had given her were so comfortable and practical.

"You have good hands," he said in that dry tone of his, as though everything were simultaneously curious and boring. "Are you a craftswoman?"

She laughed at that, lifting his boot into her lap and refusing to meet his eyes. He had strange eyes, a curiously bright hazel-gold, and he watched everything she did with a sharp gaze that made her feel flushed. She supposed she was only blushing because no man had ever looked at her so intensely without leering before, but even so could not bring herself to meet his gaze. 

She'd cut down the side of his boot with her knife so it would fit around his splint, and now she threaded another length of petticoat through the holes she'd punched so she could secure it tight to his leg. She half remembered Mam doing something similar to cousin Robert's leg, once when they were small, and thought that it would serve the beautiful young man just as well as it had her cousin.

"I'm a shopgirl," she said, carefully easing his boot up his leg and lacing it tight, tying it off neatly and ignoring his grumbling. She knew that no matter how sore and uncomfortable it was now, he'd thank her for it when his ankle healed straight instead of turning in. "I couldn't be called a craftswoman, no."

Sansa still wasn't convinced that the beautiful young man was a star, curiously bright eyes and spring water-soft silver-blue silk shirt and midnight-blue-dawn-black boots of a leather softer than any she'd ever seen before aside. He _was_ incredibly strange, though, from his too-sharp gaze to his odd accent. Sansa could have written his accent off as regional, but there was something about it that felt... Distant.

And she'd never seen a broken leg like his but for the time cousin Robert had fallen straight down from a tree, and there were no trees high enough for twenty yards from where the beautiful young man had fallen.

It seemed silly that a star should be a beautiful young man, though. 

 

* * *

 

"The storms are flowing towards the Wall," Lyanna said angrily, reading her charts and refusing to acknowledge the tears burning in her eyes. "Ben, you  _must_ be able to see that!"

"I see it, Lya," he agreed. "It just seems odd that he'd risk Ned by bringing him close to the Wall, given the consequences-"

"I know that!" she snapped. "Damn it all, Ben, I  _know_ that! But what are we supposed to do?"

"What Brandon told us to do?" Ben suggested. "Leave the stormchasing to Jon, follow one of the stronger trails the stone is leaving? As Bran himself is doing?"

Lya knew Ben understood her better than anyone else did, but even he couldn't quite comprehend just how desperately she  _needed_ to be the one to find Ned, how certain she was that she had to find Robert, not that blasted  _stone._

"Because I'm  _right,_ Ben," she insisted. "I'm  _right,_ I know it!"

 

* * *

 

Cersei stood on the promontory and looked at Faerie spread out below her like an ugly quilt.

"Ghastly place," she said, casting her runestones again to reassure herself that she was in the right place. "I can't  _wait_ to remodel."

Her little cart made a fine inn, and her sweet goats made fair enough young men to help her run it, just for the one night.

"You're burning through that star like there's no tomorrow, sweet sister," she heard, and she spat on the ground in annoyance at being summoned by  _him_ instead of Jaime.

"Yes?" she hissed, rubbing her ring to bring them into view. "May I  _help_ you?"

Tyrion and Jaime swam into view, and she recoiled from them, from how  _awful_ they looked. Had she fit with them, only days before? Had her beauty failed so terribly as Jaime's? It made her skin crawl to think so, but she hid her revulsion from Jaime.

"We only seek to warn you that you have but a few scant hours," Tyrion said in a croak she assumed was supposed to be sing-song. "The star will be with you not long after nightfall, sweet sister, and you must look your most beautiful for him."

"I am aware," she said. "I can read the runes - better than you, I might add."

"Your little inn should serve your purpose," Jaime said, and his voice soothed the nerves Tyrion always frazzled so easily. "He will be tired, and unwell, and I think lonely, too."

"I know well how to offer comfort to a  _man_ ," she said, rolling her eyes and tossing her hair back over her shoulder. "Off with you both, I have  _work_ to do."

 

* * *

 

"My name is  _Willas,"_ he bit out, leaning harder on the crutch she'd made for him and trying not to swear. "Stop calling me  _sir."_

His leg was throbbing so painfully he could hardly think, but she was urging him along the road, herding him like a duckling, insisting that she knew  _precisely_ where they were going.

"Well, I'm sorry, but I don't feel that I know you quite well enough to call you by your first name," she said, turning her nose up primly and hitching her rucksack higher over her shoulders. Willas had only ever seen humanity from afar, and they seemed so very different this close in. She was ruder and snippier than he and his siblings had imagined from high up, and while yes, she was very lovely, there was something about that furry ear of hers that seemed familiar. A half-remembered dream lingered on the edge of his mind, an understanding that he couldn't quite comprehend.

"Why in the world would you not call me by my name?" he demanded. "It is my  _name,_ what else should you call me?"

"It's impolite," she said, and something about the way she held her head reminded him of other songs, songs that had become friends, and that made him feel uncomfortable. "Now, I think that you could do with something to eat, so we are going to-"

He watched as she halted, turning her head this way and that, looking confused for the first time since she'd set about binding his leg. Uncertainty didn't suit her, he thought, settling down at the base of an old oak tree by the side of the road. 

"We are going this way," she said after a moment too long. "There is food, and shelter, and somewhere to rest. You haven't slept since I found you, and a good night's sleep will do you a world of good."

"What part of  _star_ continues to escape you?" he grumbled, allowing her to help him up for lack of better options. "I am a  _star_ , Miss Sansa Tully, and stars do not  _sleep_ at  _night!"_

"Well, I don't see what else there is for you to do until I can get you back up into the sky," she said, infuriatingly reasonable. He'd found that about her - she liked to follow rules, he'd noticed, about sleeping and mealtimes, even though from what she'd told him she'd broken several rather important rules just to come to Faerie. "It's only for a short while - I judge we're no more than two weeks or so from the wall. After that, I send you back into the sky."

"You said it was no more than two weeks away four days ago," he huffed, gladly letting her pull his arm around her shoulders when his leg throbbed so hard that he tilted sideways. "And how do you know my leg won't slow us down? And what if there's awful weather? I've seen how your world looks after bad rain, Miss Sansa Shopgirl, and I can't imagine that it will be easy to navigate."

"You should see  _my world_ during bad rain, sir," she said distractedly, planting the point of her shoulder firmly into his armpit and nudging him along. "Now look lively - I can  _smell_ hot food from here."

 

* * *

 

Brandon knew most every inn along this road, and prided himself on remembering the name of every girl he'd had in every inn.

Brandon didn't know this inn.

It was a tidy little place, reddish wood and deep golden straw, a merry curl of smoke pouring from the chimney and the most delicious smell of venison coming from the open door.

A handsome woman with a magnificent fall of bright blonde curls was standing at the door, garbed in crimson and smiling wickedly. Barbrey had smiled at him like that, years ago, so he handed his horse off to the stable boy and crossed the little green.

"Good tidings, madam," he said brightly, bowing low. "I seek lodgings for the night, and a hot meal. May I impose on your hospitality?"

"Of course, my lord," she said, and Brandon knew that sort of hair flick well enough to know that he had a good chance at a roll in the hay, too, which always made a good inn sweeter. "If you'll come this way?"

She was a charming sort of woman, if a touch over-familiar even for Brandon's tastes, and he gladly sank into the bath she had drawn for him - she looked disappointed that she was drawn away by a knock on the door of the inn. He wouldn't have minded sharing his bath with a pair of breasts as fine as hers, and her dolt of a husband downstairs would never know, Brandon was sure of that.

He could hear voices from downstairs - a man and a woman, he thought, and the innkeeper herself, too. 

By the time he came downstairs for the venison stew he'd been promised, clean and garbed in fresh shirt and breeches, there was only the handsome woman and a young man. There was something odd about the young man, Brandon thought, something too-pale about his skin and too-bright about his eyes, but he smiled faintly over the handsome woman's shoulder as she splinted his leg.

"Good evening," Brandon called cheerfully, settling at the table and crossing his arms behind his head. "Travelled far?"

"Farther than I ever imagined," the young man said, something wry and old in his smile. "And you, sir?"

"Half the world," Brandon said. "But I would go further in pursuit of my goal - I seek my brother, you see. He has been missing for many years."

It seemed like nothing when put so succinctly, but a day never went by that Brandon didn't miss Ned like hell. Lya and Ben were all well and good, and young Jon was as fine a lad as there was in all the world. He would be a fine Lord of the Winterhold one day, too, for all that Brandon had his misgivings about handing the reins over to a half-Dragon, especially one whose Stark blood was so thinned that he had smooth, rounded ears. 

Ned would better know how to handle young Jon, Brandon knew. Ned would never have gotten himself cursed by a woodswitch so he couldn't father children, either. Ned would never have let the line be broken.

"I am sorry for your loss," the young man said, the pale glow of his skin dimming sadly. "I recently lost my own siblings - two brothers and a sister. All younger than me."

"Come now, sweetling," the inkeeper said warmly, "let the fire chase away the sorrow from the cockles of your heart."

Brandon watched as the handsome woman -  _call me Lannie, sweetling_ , she murmured to the young man - clucked and fussed, and the stew she set on the table before him was  _delicious._

The young man was joined at the fire by a young woman by the time Brandon had finished eating - a pretty girl with the sort of striking eyes Ned had always liked, who bickered with the young man as though they were married. She even fussed at his hair the way Brandon remembered his mother doing to Pop, before the thawrush in the icefalls swept her away when Ben was just a tiny little thing clinging to Brandon's fingers.

Brandon had done his best for his brothers and sister then, especially for Ben and for Lya - Ned had been his best friend, his companion and equal, and together they'd raised Ben and Lya as best they could while Pop ruled the Winterhold without Mama to help him.

Pop had been  _so angry_ with Brandon about that blasted curse, he remembered. It had come so soon after Lya's falling pregnant and Ned's disappearance that, to Pop, it had seemed as though their whole family was dying.  _  
_

 _If I can't have your  children, then no one else can!_ Barbrey always had been prone to overreaction.

 

* * *

 

Cersei knew those blasted wolf ears - the Starks of the Winterhold had hunted her family for centuries, and had brought about their fall more than once. She had learned much from the arrogant young men who had thought to share her bed these past days, since she had begun her hunt, and she supposed that this must be Brandon, the new-made Lord of the Winterhold. 

He would be like the wilder of the Starks who had gone before, she thought - there was a loose sort of tension about the line of his shoulders, as though he were a breath from springing into action, and she could see that the lines around his eyes came more from joy than sorrow. Had the star and its keeper been delayed a night or so, Cersei might even have enjoyed bedding with Lord Stark. As it stood now, he would have to die before sunrise.

The girl who had come with the star - a red-haired little chit who looked about as though Cersei's inn were the worst sort of hovel, and who fussed about the star as though she  _owned_ it, fixing its hair and fiddling at the splint Cersei had bound to its leg as though  _she_ might know some way to improve it!

Still, the girl was little matter - she was pretty enough, in a rough, mortal sort of way, and Cersei supposed Tyrion might be distracted by her for a few moments, just long enough for Cersei to land the blow that would take his ugly head from his shoulders. She could be useful, after Cersei had her star.

Lord Brandon Stark was watching the girl wistfully, and Cersei wondered if perhaps she could use the girl to distract the wolf so she might abscond with the star.

But no, best to make a clean job of it. Take the star's heart, bind the girl, kill the wolf. Simple and clean.

The star was saying something -  _closer to three weeks than two_ \- to the girl, its eyes following her pale fingers as she braided her long hair in coils around her head, reaching out and tucking a loose tendril behind her ear as they argued. The pearlescent glow of its skin made Cersei's mouth water, and the gleam of its stardust-gold eyes set her pulse racing. Stars were always impossibly beautiful, almost as beautiful as Cersei and Jaime themselves were at the height of their power, and this one was no different. She could see dusk in the heavy curls fading-dark of his hair and dawn in the sharp, clean lines of his face, and wondered how sweet his eternity would taste when she and Jaime devoured his heart.

"Oh, do stop," the girl scolded, swatting at the star's hand and rolling her eyes. "It  _is_ ugly, now stop fussing and let me finish braiding my hair, thank you ever so much."

Whatever was ugly, Cersei did not much care - she found mortals to be so flawed that they were pointless, as a general rule, and in that pointlessness was an ugliness that could not be overlooked. She knew only that the girl and the star were sufficiently distracted by their argument that they would not miss her when she slipped upstairs to get her knife - nor would Lord Stark, it seemed, because his wistful gaze had turned sharp and interested, and he was leaning toward the fire, toward the girl and the star.

 

* * *

 

 _Dog ear._ Brandon had heard  _dogear, dogear!_ whenever there was a harsh winter or a poor harvest or a tax hike for as long as he could understand the words. It was the first insult people threw at a Stark of the Winterhold, the easiest and most obvious given the shape of their ears. Brandon had never given much thought to his ears, but Ned, oh, Ned had always been self-conscious of his ears, because of all the time he'd spent in the lowlands. 

The girl by the fire, the pretty one who had the sort of eyes Ned had liked and who fussed like their mother had and who held her head  _just like Pop had_ , she was lamenting that her  _dog ear_ was ugly.

He couldn't help himself. It seemed impossible, especially given that  _Ned_ was the missing one, but there was no man or woman in Faerie with wolf ears who didn't have Stark blood.

"Excuse me, madam," he said, moving carefully toward the fire, terrified of frightening her away. If she  _was_ Ned's girl, oh, if she was Brandon's niece, she might know where Ned was! And even if she didn't, as Ned's daughter, she was Brandon's heir - heir to the Winterhold! "Did I hear you mention a- a  _dog_ ear?"

The girl's head snapped up, wide eyes suspicious and a hand cupped over one ear. "And what is it to you, sir, if I did?"

He gestured helplessly to his own ears, more silver than grey now from all these years of stress and sorrow, willing her to understand, because he certainly had no words for her, no explanation.

"A hairy lady told me that she owed my father a debt," the girl said, rising from her seat, the young man rising awkwardly at her side. "She said that everyone on this side of the wall would know who I was by my ear."

"I- I am not your father," Brandon said - _the hairy lady must be one of the direwolves, if she has their blessing then she_ has _to be Ned's girl -_  "but I am your blood, I think."

He saw the handsome woman coming down the stairs in the mirror over the fire, the wicked knife in her hand gleaming like death.

The girl -  _my niece_ \- pushed her young man behind her, eyes wide and panicked but jaw set, and Brandon did what he always did, despite Pop's best efforts, and went with his gut.

There was a flare of light behind him, and the handsome woman - the  _witch,_ how could he have been so blind? - screamed in fury as he sank onto her knife. 

 _The stone led me to Ned's girl,_ he realised as the witch drew the knife out of his chest and raised it to slash his throat.  _Her young man is the star!_

Well, at least his death wasn't for nothing. He'd saved Ned's girl and kept a star away from a dark witch. That was more than Pop had ever expected of him.


	6. High above and far below

The stub of the hairy lady's candle had melted against Sansa's hand, and she might have screamed for the pain of her burns had Willas not been sobbing beside her, curled around his leg in agony so obvious that it turned her stomach.

 _Think of home_ she'd said as she thrust her hand, candle and all, into the fire burning suddenly crimson in the hearth, and she supposed she ought to have said  _think of my home,_ because there were clouds all about them and she couldn't help but wonder how they were staying airborne.

Willas looked fit to faint, and she thought he might have done so had it not been for the net that landed on them just then, a heavy thing of thick rope, with weights all around the fringe. Sansa had seen nets like this before - they ordered them in special sometimes, in the shop - and reached for the edge without thinking, meaning to lift it off them, and nearly lost a finger to a thrown axe for her trouble.

"I wouldn't if I were you, little lady," said someone who Sansa presumed had thrown the net, appearing through the clouds like a ghost, dressed all in shades of black and grey. A woman, she thought, but could not be sure. "That's terribly bad behaviour for a prisoner, after all."

Sansa screamed when the net was pulled off them and her hands were seized, but Willas only moaned, his bad leg twisted awkwardly when their captors lifted him. That worried her - he usually just grumbled his way through any pain, cursing under his breath as if to keep her from overhearing, and the absence of that filth frightened her. How badly hurt was he, to be so quiet? 

"Can you please see to his leg?" she asked the man holding her - he was huge, but oddly childish looking, with fair hair and not a whisper of beard. "Please, sir, he's in pain, and he's already had a bad fall-"

"Pain's the least of his worries," the man said with a grin. "Got to get you to the captains, so we have. Come along now."

She was relieved, at least, that they carried Willas instead of forcing him to walk along the... The deck? It clicked under the heels of her boots and swayed ever so slightly, as she'd read ships did, but she couldn't imagine how there'd be cloud so low as to smother the deck of a ship this way. 

They wandered close to the railings, to the side, and she caught a glimpse of what lay below - not water, but open sky, miles and miles of it, all the way to the ground. Her head spun so badly that her legs went all wobbly, and her beardless guard swung her up and over his shoulder with a great booming hoot of laughter.

"What's your name, grounder?" he asked cheerfully, bouncing her along toward the captains he'd mentioned. "Mine's Qarl. Qarl the Maid."

"S-Sansa," she managed. "Sansa Tully of Wall."

Some in Wall had objected to Sansa using Mam's last name, but Granddad had insisted on it, no matter what the likes of Old Frey had had to say on the subject. She'd never felt a Tully, though,  _bastard freak dogear_ more her names than Tully had ever been.

"Wall, is it?" Qarl the Maid said thoughtfully. "I've heard of Wall, that's near the market town, isn't it?"

"It is, yes," she said, feeling wrong-footed - the ghost in the clouds had called them prisoners, and they were being held like prisoners but not treated like prisoners. It was so strange. "People come from miles around every midsummer to stay in Wall for the market. I've never been, though."

"And here we thought all the people from your side came to the Midsummer Market," Qarl said. "I've been and I'm from the islands away off the western coast of Faerie. You're from not a mile away from the market town, and you've never been?"

"I work in a shop," Sansa said shortly. "Even on market days, people need a loaf of bread or a pound of ham. I serve them even on market days."

"You've hit a nerve, Qarl," called the handsome, smiling man standing at the door, who held out his arm to Sansa when Qarl set her on her feet. "It seems we have a shopgirl who thinks herself above her station."

"A shopgirl who finds herself in high company," Qarl agreed, reaching out to toy with the heavy jewel that Sansa had sometimes seen Willas fiddling with when he was in particularly bad pain. Willas, whose head was lolling forward, all colour gone from his cheeks and his usual healthy glow dimmed by the pain. His starbright eyes were closed, too, and she worried at that, for it was fully dark and he  _never_ closed his eyes so easily at night.

"A shopgirl who worries that her  _high company_ is in need of a doctor," she said sharply, jerking away from the smiling man. "He has already injured his leg once in the past week, with only me to tend him - please, neither one of us have any money, nor any family to whom we might be ransomed-"

The smiling man caught Sansa around the arm and spun her through the door behind him, laughing when she shrieked and stumbled, and sauntered in after her, nudging her along the short corridor ahead of him. 

"Miss Sansa Tully of Wall," he announced, pushing her through another door, "and her rich young man, too, but he's not well enough yet to tell us his name, and she's not offered one up just yet."

Sansa clamped her jaw shut and watched as two men set Willas down on a broad couch with surprising gentleness. 

"Miss Missandei will be here in a moment," the smiling man said, throwing himself down onto the deep window seat on the opposite wall. "She'll see to your friend, Miss Sansa Tully of Wall. She's got good hands, you needn't fear his health much longer."

Sansa nodded, looking away from him to the two women sitting by the desk - one on the chair behind it, the other on the corner nearest the window seat. The one in the chair was a tiny little slip of a thing, silvery haired and stunning, the other dark and near a twin to the smiling man. They were both dressed in similar clothes to Sansa's, but their hair was cut short, choppy and uneven, like a man's.

"Captain Daenerys Targaryen and Captain Asha Greyjoy," the smiling man said, waving a hand in their direction. "I am Theon Greyjoy, the bitch's brother, and that lingering cloud of misery in the far corner is Jon, Captain Targaryen's nephew. Welcome to the Black Wind, Miss Sansa Tully."

 

* * *

 

"Now then, Miss Sansa Tully," Dany said, watching the way the girl watched her companion being carried away. "Tell us how you came to be on our ship."

Dany watched Asha move to the couch as soon the boy was gone and sprawl out as elegantly as Theon, but Jon remained in his dark corner, brooding over something or other. He'd been sorrowful since the moment he'd landed aboard, with only the vaguest explanation of  _needing_ to follow the storms for some accursed Stark mission, and his presence would be the very last thing to invite the girl to talk.

The girl, with her tangle of fire-bright hair, sagged in her seat. She hadn't even sat down until the door closed behind her companion, and when she had, it had been as if she hadn't slept in a week.

"We were at an inn," she said. "A- the innkeeper came at us with a strange knife, made of glass. A man with whom we were speaking interfered, allowing us to make our escape. I lit the candle, and we... We had a misunderstanding of intent, and ended up here instead of where either of us meant to go. I am sorry, I swear to you, we are not stowaways or thieves."

Dany motioned for her to go on, but she only shrugged helplessly. 

"Tell me, then," Dany said, "how you, a girl from Wall, found herself with a star for company?"

Miss Sansa Tully blanched, wide-eyed and panicked looking. 

"Since you are not from Faerie, I suppose you wouldn't understand the significance of my name being Targaryen," Dany said. "What it means, Miss Tully, is that I am a dragon. By my very nature, I'm a star-eater, much in the vein of the woman who posed as your innkeeper - only a witch carries a glass blade."

"A- a-"

"A star-eater, yes. And a dragon. And that woman was undoubtedly a witch - our Jon could smell her stink off you as soon as you landed on our deck. You would have been treated kinder had it not been for that."

A scream echoed up through the floor, and their guest flinched.

"You needn't worry," Asha said idly, toying with one of her axes. "They're just setting your young man's leg belowdecks. You needn't worry - my companion neglected to mention that she and her nephew have forsaken their family's nasty habit of consuming stars. Your boy is safe, grounder, worry not. We're more concerned as to how you came by a Babylon candle."

The girl's colour returned all in one sharp flush, ugly and red, and she held her burned hand closer to her chest. The purple burns were streaked with thick black wax, Dany noticed, and the whole lot looked terribly painful.

"Theon," she said. "Bring Jon - run belowdecks and see if Missandei can leave Miss Tully's young man with Jorah and see to Miss Tully's own injury."

"Tell us true," Asha said, once Theon and Jon were gone through the door again. "How did you come by a Babylon candle? They're powerful magic, but they're made through evil means. Were you the one to make it?"

"No! No, I- the hairy lady gave it to me, my first day here! She shared a meal and gave me these clothes, and the candle was with them, with a note saying to, to light it and thinks of my heart's desire! I am from  _Wall_ , ladies, we do not  _have_ magic!"

She looked fit to cry, so Dany rose and set a hand on Asha's shoulder - she would not risk her crew or her ship for anything, not even these storms of Jon's, nor the star Daenerys could feel like an itch under her skin. She did not think Sansa Tully of Wall was likely to be a threat, but if a witch was chasing her... 

And there was the mention of the  _hairy lady_ to take into account, as well. Asha had sat up at that, and Daenerys knew that name in a vague sort of way.

"If we are to believe that you and your star were being pursued by a witch but you had no knowledge of what she was, then we must also believe that you are from the village of Wall, and that the Babylon candle came into your possession as a gift, the provenance of which you know not."

"Yes," the girl said, tears spilling down her face as another cry echoed up through the floorboards. "Please, we are  _lost,_ we have nothing worth stealing and no one to ransom us,  _please."_

 

* * *

 

Sansa's hand was in agony, and she felt at her wits end with Willas' screams ringing out from below her and the two women before her - the dark one, Captain Greyjoy, seemed content to toss her axe up and down and smile in a way like Mr Baelish who owned the shop sometimes did.

Captain Targaryen looked conflicted - something hot flashed in her huge eyes every time Willas screamed, and Sansa desperately wanted to be gone, to take Willas somewhere safe, even if it meant tending his leg herself once more - but kept on questioning her, over and over, even after a delicate little woman with golden eyes came in to warm the wax on Sansa's hand with hot, damp cloths so she could peel it off, even while Sansa cried with the pain while Miss Missandei bathed and dressed her burns.

After it all, though, Captain Targaryen smiled gently, smoothed Sansa's hair back from her face, and said "Come, Miss Sansa, let's get you to bed."

The bed in question was a narrow bunk, a shelf bolted to the wall of a cabin not far from that of the two captains, with a thin mattress and warm blankets. Willas was asleep on the other bunk, bolted to the opposite wall, and she lay on her side so she might watch him until she fell asleep - if she fell asleep. Her hand was so painful she didn't think she could, not between that and the terror of the  _witch_ and Willas' screams, and...

 _I am your blood._ What had he meant, the man who had given his life so Sansa and Willas might have theirs? He had had ears just like hers, but paler coloured - the same moonlight-silver as the streaks of grey in Granddad's hair had been, Sansa thought. He had looked at her in the strangest way, the man who was her blood, as though he'd never imagined he might meet her, as though her very existence was a marvel and a wonder.

She wondered if, had he lived, he would have told her about her father. If he truly did know  _\- had known -_ her father. For all that Sansa had long ago decided she wanted nothing at all to do with the man who'd sired her and then abandoned her, now that she had come so close...

She cried, and watched the glow of Willas' skin return, and fell asleep with her cheeks still wet.

 

* * *

 

 

"I believe, sweet sister, that she might be airborne," Tyrion said. "Stormhunters, probably. Mayhaps even the rumoured Last Dragon. You've lost, Cersei.  _Lost."_

Cersei screamed in fury, but then took a deep breath to compose herself. It would not do to lose her temper completely, not when the task had not yet been rendered completely futile.

"Tell me where the ship will dock, then," she snarled. "I have time yet, if you can tell me  _where the damn thing will be."_

She took what there was of wealth from Brandon Stark's corpse before she left - silver, mostly, typical of a Stark - and spent more of her magic on returning her boys to goats. There was a long road from here to the market town at the wall.

 

* * *

 

Ned Stark hadn't felt like Ned Stark in a long time - not since he'd left a basket and his heart at the crossing point in the wall, for the daughter he would never see but knew in his heart had been born to beautiful Catelyn with her striking eyes - but he did in the moment he felt his father's distant death.

Ned wondered if all the time he'd spent in the lowlands as a lad had made him more attuned to his family, to his  _pack,_ and he'd only stayed sane all these years because he'd known that they lived. He'd been able to tell that Pop and Bran and Lya and Ben and Lya's child - a boy - were alive. 

Since Pop died, he'd felt something new, something strange and wonderful that he'd never felt before. He'd felt his girl from the moment she crossed into Faerie. 

There had been the witch who'd accosted and cursed Robert, somehow overlooking Ned - no other witch or warlock had ever overlooked him before, and it worried him that she had. If she was chasing a star, she was a dark witch, which meant Bran was likely hunting her, which meant Bran would be in danger.

And then he'd felt Bran die, and he'd howled, unable to help himself. At least Lya and Ben and Lya's boy and  _Ned's girl_ were alive. He wondered if there were some way for him to see her, if he could find her as he could always find home. 

He wondered if she had Catelyn's eyes. He hoped so.


	7. The lull before the storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter did not go at all as imagined.

Sansa had awoken to find Willas watching her, bleary-eyed with pain and flushed with fever, but lucid, able to speak. He told her his leg was so painful he could hardly think, and that he was sorry for not understanding what she'd meant when she told him to think of home. When asked, he assured her that the ship's doctors had taken excellent care of him, and that he was sure he was only so sore because he was healing.

Sansa decided to ask if Miss Missandei, who had taken care of Sansa's own hurts the night before, might check Willas' leg - the swelling she'd not been able to ease on the road seemed to have gone down, she noticed, and his ankle looked to be straighter than it had been, too.

"I'll be back in a moment," she said once she had her boots on nice and tight. "I'll just find someone and ask if they might send up their doctor, what do you say?"

He nodded, watching after her with fear in his lovely eyes, so she swept down and pressed a kiss to his brow, as Mam had when Sansa was small and afraid. 

There were guards outside the door, one of them a tall, slight man with enormous eyes and terrible hair. 

"I'll let Captain Greyjoy know you're awake," he said, darting away and leaving Sansa with baby-faced Qarl from the night before.

"I do declare you're a sight prettier by daylight," Qarl said, but Sansa felt that he did not mean it with the same intent as the boys in Wall who'd complimented her had when they said such things. For all his size, Qarl seemed oddly harmless, and so Sansa did not mind leaving the door of her and Willas' little cabin open when she moved back to sit down - she did not fear that Qarl would either hurt Willas or behave inappropriately with her.

_Bit late to be worrying about impropriety,_ a sneering little voice that sounded annoyingly like Old Frey whispered in the back of her mind.  _You've spent fifteen nights sleeping alongside a man you're not married to, remember._

It didn't seem like fifteen nights - she and Willas had spent near three nights by the crater, before he'd been fit to walk much, and their pace had been terribly slow. She'd called him  _sir_ to annoy him, because he was  _completely_ irritating, but she found that she quite liked him, in truth. He was quiet and thoughtful and told the sweetest stories about his brothers and sister, and he sang under his breath when he thought Sansa was sleeping.

It struck her, like a slap, that she knew Willas better than she'd ever known Harry, and that left her feeling terribly muddled, especially when he reached out to her. His fingers were long and his grip was strong, and she told her heart to quiet when she noticed how nicely their hands fit together.

"So how did you two lovely young people meet?" Qarl asked cheerfully, leaning against the doorframe and folding his arms. "Did he land on you when he fell, Miss Sansa?"

"I landed on top of him," Sansa said. "I lost my way, and he broke my fall."

Willas coughed out a laugh, and Sansa smiled quickly at him before turning back to Qarl, who was regarding them thoughtfully. 

"Isn't that a fine thing," he said, and Sansa felt very small and very silly when he began to laugh.

 

* * *

 

"My trousers," Asha said firmly, setting Dany's trousers back in their place with a smile. "She's a good foot taller than you, Targaryen - your shirt will be better, though, she's a skinny thing."

Dany pulled out a shirt and set it in Asha's arms. The girl's clothes had been a ruin last night, and while the star was much of a size with Tris, the girl was awkwardly made, too tall and too skinny to fit any one person's clothes easily. Asha's trousers, Dany's shirt, Dorea's coat, Missandei's belt...

"We have to find her a pair of boots," Dany pointed out. "I don't know whose might fit her, though."

"Grey's," Asha said, poking through the chest at the foot of their bed idly. "She can try my spares, too. Poor things, really. It must be wretched to have nothing more than the clothes on their backs."

Dany thought that having a damned  _star_ in thrall to you would make up for not having fresh socks, but she didn't say so. She knew what it was to be without anything, remembered long, terrible years spent running - from Lannisters, from Baratheons, from anyone who thought the world would be better off without Targaryens to blight it.

Viserys had been his own doom, really, and Dany had used the enslavement he'd sold her into to build freedom. She had found Irri and Jhiqui and Dorea, and Jhogo and Aggo and Rakharo, and Missandei and Jorah during those dark days, and had come through them triumphant, powerful enough to begin making themselves known, to begin hunting the Masters and the witches and the storms.

Dany had met Asha at the market, in the town near the wall, and after spending most all of the market in one another's company, the whole truth of them both had come out - Dany was still hunted, and had kept her profile low this close to the wall, where hunters congregated, and Asha...

Well, Asha hadn't kept a low profile. Asha was the best damned stormhunter in the whole of Faerie, and she liked for people to know it. Stormhunting was officially against the laws imposed by the Lords of the Winterhold and their ilk, but in the market town, lightning was worth a hundred times its weight in gold, and the prestige that came with being the ones to catch it was something Asha and her crew, Qarl and Tris and Theon, especially Theon, had relished.

Asha had known that a Dragon could only be an asset to a crew of stormchasers, and Dany had known that they needed powerful allies to survive - so the two crews had become one, and Dany and Asha had become closer with every storm they caught.

The Black Wind was home, now, the sort of home Dany had never thought to have. In finding it she had come to realise that the home of which Viserys had spoken so often was beyond her reach, and it hadn't hurt as she might have thought it would.

She wondered if Miss Sansa Tully with no father and a wolf's ear had ever felt at home in the village of Wall, considering she so obviously did not belong there.

"Captains," Tristifer called from outside the door, "Miss Sansa and the star are awake - shall I fetch Miss Missandei and Jorah for them?"

"Do," Asha said, stretching her arms over her head and taking her favourite dirk from its hiding place above the roof beam. "Captain Targaryen and I will look in on our guests - Qarl is with them, I trust?"

Qarl was with them, sitting on the floor just inside the door of their cabin and laughing at something one of them had said - Dany had always marvelled at the big man's knack for putting people at their ease, a knack which had worked even on the terrified girl and boy they'd collected the night before.

It was odd to think of the star as a  _boy,_ as a person and not just a morsel to prolong her life and expand her powers beyond her wildest dreams, but seeing him there on the bunk, sweating in pain and gripping the girl's hand so tight his knuckles were silver-white through his dimly-glowing skin, well, it was hard to consider him anything  _but_ a boy, even though he looked to be nearer thirty than twenty, older than Daenerys herself.

"Miss Tully," Asha said, dropping the fresh clothes on the end of the girl's bunk. "Star. Good morning to you both."

"Captain Greyjoy," the girl said, dipping her head respectfully. "Captain Targaryen."

The star was staring at Dany, the glow of his face dimmed.

"You're a star-eater," he said, his stardust eyes turning cold and hard and ancient. "The last star that fell was my aunt, dragon. Your kind and the witches fought over her until there was nothing left of her. We felt her die."

"And you have fallen," Dany said, "and I gave orders for my healers to see to your health. I gave you a safe bunk, when I could just as easily left you in a cell in the brig."

"You and I both know well why you might have treated me well," he said, pushing himself up on shaking arms - the sheen of sweat on his face had progressed to bubbles and drops, rolling down his temples and jaw and neck. "I know well how your kind savour the heart of a star at peace, stareater. I am older than any one of you, and I have witnessed the rise  _and_ the fall of your people."

"You speak as though you know me, star," Dany said quietly. "If that were true, you would know that I've long given up on my legacy. I am not what you believe me to be."

"Willas," the girl said, "Willas, I trust her. Do you trust me?"

 

* * *

 

Willas refused to let go of Sansa's hand as the big hairy man, Jorah, set to work on his leg - so Sansa shifted to sit by his side, leaving her bunk free for the captains.

"We are bound for Wall," she said. "We ask only that you let us go when next you- you make port."

"And if we choose instead to sell your star to the highest bidder? And you as well, pretty Miss Sansa?" Captain Greyjoy said. "What will you do?"

Sansa clutched to Willas' hand and looked hard at Captain Greyjoy.

"You won't do that," she said. And she couldn't have said why she was so certain, but she was - she knew these women were not slavers. She knew that they would not harm her and Willas. They would not have put their healers to work on Willas' leg or her hand if they had malicious intent.

"No," Captain Greyjoy agreed, smiling suddenly, "no, we won't. We are heading the direction of the market town, but won't be going quite that far - you'll take a week or more off your journey, by my measure."

Sansa sat and held Willas' hand and listened to the captains explain the route she and Willas ought to take, and watched carefully all the while as Willas and Captain Targaryen stared hard at one another all the while. She paid more attention to Captain Greyjoy than she did to that, though, because she felt sure that Captain Greyjoy's assurances that Captain Targaryen had no intention of- of eating Willas were true.

"We have clothes for you both - fresh, unburned and unbloodied. Fresh boots, too, better made for walking than yours, star, and less showy than yours, Miss Sansa Tully."

Sansa looked at her boots, thinking that they weren't terribly showy, just very well made.

"You have our thanks," she said, squeezing Willas' fingers when he spasmed in pain at some ministration or other of Miss Missandei's. "We will do anything we can to help along the way, but-"

"We will see," Captain Greyjoy said. "For now, we're sending out scouts to see if we can't find the witch that was trying for your star, and we'll see what to do from there. Anyone who hunts a star is dangerous. We want to be sure we can avoid them."

 

 

* * *

 

Lyanna hadn't spoken a word since they'd been told of Bran's death. 

Ben hadn't expected her to say much - she grieved quietly, always had - but he wouldn't have minded at least some little conversation. Her strong-mindedness had near gotten her killed more than once, and her refusal to speak was just the first part of that. Lyanna's stubbornness could only ever be broken by Bran or by Jon, and with Jon away hunting with his aunt and Bran-

Well, Ben hadn't given himself a moment to think about Bran's death just yet, because to accept that there was only him and Lya left was too hard. Jon hardly counted, with his round ears, with his shapeshifting and the lust that had flashed in his eyes when the star had fallen from the sky, and since Ben had no interest in producing an heir...

Their line would end. And Lya didn't seem to understand that, not truly, and Ben wished she could learn that chasing this storm was not the quickest way to Ned, not when they had no means to track it easily and when they  _could not guarantee_ that this storm had Ned with it.

The star, though, the star would lead them to Ned. Ben had only come with Lya instead of going with Bran because he had wanted to keep her from dying, and in doing so he had lost Bran.

"I'm going to track the star," Ben said over breakfast. "I have the means to do so, and I should have done so from the off. Find a way to get word to Jon, Lya. Tell him to come home. We have more important things to do than to chase storms."

Lyanna looked up at him, sharp-eyed and furious.

"Ned is with Robert," she said. "I know it, just as I know that this trail of storms is Robert's doing, Ben. I know it."

Her blasted pigheadedness had near gotten her killed before, but Ben worried that her obsession would do the trick now - she'd gotten to the point where she ate only what she needed to keep going, and hardly seemed to sleep, either. If she wasn't careful, she'd waste away, just as Bran almost had in those first months after Ned disappeared.

"One more week, Lya," he said, shaking his head. "But then we  _must_ seek the star."

 

 

* * *

 

Sansa's hand healed quickly under Miss Missandei's care, but Willas' leg was not so fortunate. Three nights aboard the Black Wind and Sansa could bend her fingers, but Willas was still wholly reliant on the heavy crutches Jorah had given him. His pain at least seemed lessened, and he was smiling more, even if only with her and sometimes with Captain Greyjoy's brother.

"I like watching when you dance," he murmured on their third night as they readied for bed, his skin glowing like a pearl and his eyes warm as honey. "You seem happy when you dance, Sansa."

It had delighted her to find that the captains encouraged their crew to music and laughter at night - they all gathered on the main deck and laughed under the stars, and even the melancholy that sometimes seemed to choke Willas eased. Sansa was thrilled simply because it didn't worry anyone that she was a bastard girl - they all wished to dance with her, from Captain Greyjoy right to the quiet lieutenant who organised their guards, Grey Worm, who had given Sansa a pair of his boots.

She was happier than she'd ever been, but still felt that she ought to go home. The problem was, she did not know just where home  _was_ any more, not when she felt a pull in two directions every time she even thought the word.

Then there was the way Willas had taken to looking at her, with a smile and a tilt of his head and his lip caught between his teeth. He had seemed so annoyed by all the time she spent dancing that she couldn't imagine that he meant it when he said he enjoyed watching her.

"I wish I could dance with you," he said quietly, smiling one of those sweet smiles from under the tangle of his fringe, "I always loved dancing."

She touched his face, brushing his hair back, and wondered how he could bear to be so lonely.

"Rest yourself," she said gently, unsure why her breath hitched when he closed his eyes and turned his cheek into her palm but aware that it had, "and when we reach the market town, we will find some way to send you home."

 

* * *

 

"They will be at the market town in ten days," Jaime said. "Be ready for them."

Cersei's hands were aching and arthritic, but she knew what had to be done. Ten days meant she could set a leisurely pace and still reach the market town ahead of the star and its keeper, and then... 

Then, she and Jaime would be restored.

 

* * *

 

Jon landed on the upper deck during the evening's festivities after having hunted down the witch for four days.

"My uncle is dead," he said when Dany came up the deck to join him. "Brandon - the witch killed him. If the girl's story is true, Bran gave himself up to save her and the star."

Dany knew Jon better than he'd like, and she knew to give him a moment to say whatever was lingering on the tip of his tongue.

"When my grandfather died," he said, "he did... Old magic, to try and find my uncle Ned. He caused a star to fall, Daenerys."

"And you think that this is that star?"

"I do," Jon said. "And I think it drew Miss Sansa Tully to it, same as it drew my uncle to it."

"A bastard girl from the other side of the wall? Why?"

"Well," he said, folding his arms. "I think it might have something to do with that wolf's ear of hers."


	8. On the road again

Sansa held tight to Willas, her arms wound around his waist and her feet planted firmly to help him keep his balance as the Black Wind came into dock. He did his best not to lean back into her, but it was impossibly difficult when she was so warm and soft and smelled so sweet.

"Hold on tight," she breathed against his ear, his voice all laughter, and he turned his head a little to press his cheek to hers when she tucked her chin over his shoulder. "We're almost-"

She shrieked in delight when the water splashed over them, holding him tighter, and he let go of the railing with one hand to wind his fingers through hers where she had them pressed to his stomach. She squeezed back, still laughing, and eased herself away from him carefully, not quite letting go until she was sure he was steady on his crutch. He wished she wouldn't - he felt best when Sansa was close by, which seemed strange considering how often she still frustrated him - but knew that she had to. It wasn't proper for them to be so close, according to what he'd gathered from her stories, and while he thought that was silly, he knew better than to disrespect her desires.

"Here we are!" Captain Asha called, swinging down from the upper deck and dashing across to them in that over-energised way of hers. "We'll be selling our lightning and setting you on your way,  stowaways!"

She'd been overflowing with pure life from the moment the lookout had called down that they were near port, giddy with the prospect of making land, and it had been an enthusiasm that had spread thought the crew like sunrise through the dawn.

"Are you ready?" he said to Sansa, watching as she brushed droplets of water from her cheeks. "To go home?"

Her smile faltered just a little, and he wondered at that - she had become more reticent on the subject of Wall, for all that she had spoken more of her mother every day they came closer to her home. Her moods had become more changeable since the Wolf in the inn had told her he shared her blood, and while he did what he could to cheer her, Willas had always been serious by nature and cheer did not come naturally to him. 

"Or just to continue on our way?" he tried instead, finding her hand and holding on tight. "I have missed it being just you and I, you know."

Her smile returned, sweet and beautiful, and he returned it in relief - nothing made him happier than seeing her smile. 

 

* * *

 

Sansa held firm to Willas' hand as he eased himself down from the staircase to the ground, not letting go until she was sure he could stand steady. 

"Thank you so, so much," she said, turning back to the Captains. "If ever you find yourselves in Wall-"

"We know, Miss Sansa," Captain Greyjoy said, patting Sansa's cheek and smiling. "We know it well."

"Come," Captain Targaryen's nephew said. "I'll help you down."

She said a final goodbye to the crew, even stretching up to kiss Qarl's soft cheek, and let Jon help her down the stairs. She was surprised when he held onto her hand, keeping her close.

"Brandon Stark told you he was your blood," Jon said. "If you ever return to Faerie, come to the Winterhold - we will have answers for you."

Sansa looked up at home, confused, and he gestured to her pointed ear. 

"Look for the wolves in the north, Miss Sansa Tully of Wall," he said. "My blood and, I think, yours as well."

He darted back up the stairs before she could say another word, leaving her feeling as off-balance as Willas. He was gone before she found her voice, and the ship was preparing to move out by then. If he knew something of where she came from why hadn't he said anything sooner? And what was a  _Winterhold_? 

"Sansa," Willas said gently, touching his fingertips to her shoulder. "Are you coming?"

She thought of home, felt split, and took Willas' proffered hand.

That, at least, was not something she was confused about.

 

* * *

 

Ned heard them coming before Robert saw them, which was the usual way of things, and because of the curse, he had to tell Robert.

"Right then," Robert said jovially. "Back on four legs with you, can't have a stranger finding you, can we?"

Ned reluctantly folded down, the familiar creak and groan of his bones and skin and hair shifting from man to beast aching as much as ever. The flash of new scents was overwhelming for a moment, but then, oh.  _Oh._ That was unexpected.

That was  _Cat,_ and that was  _him,_ and oh heavens above it couldn't be, he had dreamed but he hadn't dared to hope-

Her hair and eyes and face were all Cat, flashing flame-red and sky-river-blue, but Ned could catch winter off her, the icefalls and the heart tree.

_My girl,_ he thought desperately, watching her come closer with a  _star_ of all things with her. She was so beautiful that he would have cried, had he been able.  _My little girl._

"Sir!" she called, tucking her shoulder under the star's arm and heaving it along with her. "Sir, would you take passengers?"

Robert eyed her as he would any pretty girl, and Ned growled as hard as he could.

"Depends on where you're headed!" Robert bellowed back, shoving the side of Ned's muzzle as he surged to his feet. "I'm bound for the market town, girl!"

Ned was suddenly terrified, because this was  _his girl_  and she was near Robert, and if Robert saw that she was Ned's girl, that she was blood of the Winterhold, Robert would behave as Robert always did and Ned could not have that. 

She had his ears - no, just one, because she was half a mortal, but she was  _his,_ and that ear marked her as his. Oh, heavens be kind, he'd gotten good at discerning colours in this form over the years and his girl was wearing Stark colours, dark grey trousers and a silvery-white shirt and a snowy-white coat, and long black boots and belt and she could have been a member of the guard at the Winterhold, and he whined, fighting the chain and the curse and knowing it was futile to do so.

"What a coincidence," she said, "so are we. We can work for our keep-"

"Bed and board to the market town," Robert huffed, waddling toward Ned's girl. "That's not a problem, girl."

Ned would've taken Robert's arm at the shoulder when he reached for Ned's girl but for the blasted curse, but even the curse couldn't quiet his growl when she shrank and silvered and-

A tiny silver fish, in the little round fish bowl that had housed Robert's pet fish before he let it die. She shimmered in the sunshine that slid through the caravan's little window, and Ned hated that she was there and he was here.

The star threw his crutch up into the caravan when Robert stepped out, and Ned watched curiously as the star used only its arms to lift itself up - one of its legs was twisted painfully, and the other seemed simply tired. 

"Oh, Sansa," he heard the star say tiredly. "What  _have_ we gotten ourselves into?"

It was only then that Ned realised that Robert hadn't so much as glanced at the star, and realised that this must be the star the Lannister witch had been chasing.

Oh,  _heavens._

 

* * *

 

"You can't possibly be serious," Lya said, the laughter in her voice edged with hysteria. "You can't mean this, Ben. Your readings must be wrong."

"I'm not wrong," Ben said through gritted teeth. "The star's trail is aligning with the storms - they're following the road to the market town. If we don't hurry, the star might go too far and be lost, and without it, we'll never find Ned. Now come on, Lya, we're already behind!"

 

* * *

 

"Your world is a very strange place, Sansa," Willas said, sitting on a bale of something that looked like hay but didn't at all smell like it as he sprinkled something that had been labelled "FOR FISHES" into the bowl that held Sansa. "I never realised quite how strange when I was so far above it, you know."

Sansa swam daintily and flickered in the sunlit water, and Willas laughed at himself, tossing a strip of dried bacon to the massive wolf that lay curled by the door of the caravan.

"My family and I used to watch great stories as they unfolded," he said to Sansa. "Heroes and villains, gods and demons. We saw witches and dragons and wolves, all from so far above that they were hard to pick out from one another, sometimes. We saw people, too. Normal ones.  _Good_ ones. Shopgirls and healers and adventurers."

The wolf was watching him closely, but compared with the way the stormlord looked right through him as though he wasn't there, Willas thought the wolf's gaze was almost comforting.

"We saw shopgirls," he said, "and girls who work in shops, Sansa Tully, and they are two  _very_ different things. Shopgirls are all well and good, but it's the girls who work in shops that you have to keep watch on. They're the ones who'll steal your heart right away without you even realising it's gone."

And it was true, he realised in something that felt almost like relief. His heart had been bright and golden and warm for days now, even through the pain of his leg, and it was al because of Sansa, with her pretty laugh and lovely eyes and sweet-smelling hair, who heaved him along when he could hardly bear to walk and who had told him to think of  _home_ as though that meant the same thing to him as to her.

"You have my heart, Miss Sansa," he said quietly. "Completely, wholly, it is in your hands."

The wolf rumbled softly, and Willas was surprised by the lack of threat. He settled back, looking at Sansa while the wolf looked at him.

 

* * *

 

The first thing Sansa did upon her arrival in the market town was throw up all over the boots of the man who'd given her and Willas safe passage. 

"Delightful," he said, booming out a thunderous laugh when she sagged against Willas' chest, his heart beating hard under her hand. "There you are, lass, bed and board and safe passage to the market town - off with you now! Go on!"

Sansa wondered whether it was her or Willas who was the more unbalanced as they staggered away from their  _kind_  benefactor, his laughter echoing after them as Sansa directed him towards the inn.

"Let's hope this innkeep is kinder than the last who offered us solace from a storm," Willas said, and she couldn't help but laugh, tucking her face against his neck as they staggered in the door. He smelled of home and his sweat on her lips was salt. 

Oh. That was a strange thought.

There was only one room left, and Sansa fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow. In the moments as she fell from standing to lying, though, she watched as Willas was washed in softly fading sunlight, and felt so happy to know he would be near while she slept that she almost laughed.

 

* * *

 

Willas hesitated in the door when he heard the splashing water, the basket of food he'd begged from the innkeep swinging from his elbow as he hobbled inside and pushed the door closed.

Sansa emerged from behind the screen wrapped in just a towel, her hair swept up on top of her head and her shoulders bare and shining under the moonlight pouring through the window. 

"Sansa," he said, wondering if his voice sounded odd or if it was all in his head. "I- are you hungry?"

"That depends," she said, "are you planning on feeding me again?"

He stared at her, completely, brutally mortified.

"You couldn't possibly have seen me do that," he said. "You- you were a tiny silver fish! A  _fish!"_

"And you told me a great deal," she said, coming across the room to take his face in her hands. "You terrible, sweet man - all these people chasing you for your heart, and you give it so easily to me?"

"Of course," he said, feeling dizzy in the best imaginable way. "Who else would I give it to?"

It was as simple as breathing to kiss her, and simpler still to let her help him back toward the bed.

 

* * *

 

"The star is nearby," Cersei said hoarsely. "I can  _smell_  it."

Something about the star felt wrong, though, felt off, but she wasn't going to give up on it just yet. Not when there was still a hope of her and Jaime regaining everything.

"I will have it soon," she said. "I  _will."_


	9. All roads lead to home

Sansa rolled into Willas' arms the moment she woke up, revelling in the rumble of his laughter in his chest, in the warmth of his skin against hers.  _This is the only way to wake up,_ she thought, leaning up to kiss him awake.

"Have I ever slept through the night like that before?" he asked, slurring and smiling. "I think I might get used to it."

"Provided you sleep with me," she said, nuzzling against the sweep of his collarbone, "I don't mind you forming that habit in the slightest."

He lay back and watched her dress and pick at the fruit left over from the night before, and she relished the feel of his eyes on her skin - he looked at her as if she was the most beautiful woman in the world, perfect from the tip of her ear to the tips of her toes, and it delighted her right to her soul.

"I love you," she whispered, leaning in to kiss him as she braided her hair. "I'll be back in a little bit - by the end of the day, I promise."

"Bring your mother," he suggested, "I would like to meet her-"

"But you'd like to rest your leg as well," she finished for him. "I understand. I'll ask Mam to come along while I'm talking with her."

He waved her off, already half-asleep again by the time she got out the door, and she couldn't help but press her hands to her mouth to catch the squeal of absolute happiness that nearly burst out of her. She couldn't wait to tell Mam about Willas, about finding a way to find her father, about chasing a storm on their fifth night aboard the Black Wind and escaping from the witch in the inn. 

She tucked the long-bladed knife Theon had given her down into her boot, adjusted the drape of her snowy-white coat and the collar of her silvery-white shirt, and made her way down the stairs. Wall was waiting, and with Wall,  _Mam._

 

* * *

 

The witch looked nothing like she had only a few short weeks ago. Ned wouldn't have recognised her if not for the wild, bloody scent of her, and those sharp green eyes.

"You had my  _star_ ," she croaked, and Robert looked at her as if she had ten heads. "Give me my  _star!"_ _  
_

"I don't have any  _star,_ woman!" Robert huffed, folding his arms over his chest. "Heavens know I'd've made use of it if I had one!"

Ned stayed in the caravan, watching and not daring to do anything that might draw attention to himself - he had no guards, no family to back him up against a Lannister, and he didn't want to risk being killed before he had a chance to get away from Robert to find his girl.

Ned could track the star - he knew the old ways - and he knew that with the star, he would find his girl.  _Sansa,_ the star had called her, and it was a name lovely enough for Ned's daughter, for  _Cat's_ daughter.

He just needed to avoid the Lannister witch. He just needed to-

"You're a lying fool," the witch hissed, raising her gnarled hands and hobbling closer to Robert. "I can  _smell_ my star!"

Ned dived out of the caravan when he heard the distant roar of gathering fury, and he was barely out of the way before the caravan and Robert and  _Ned's chain_ were engulfed in spitting crimson-gold flames that curled and liked and purred as they devoured everything they touched.

Ned watched the chain dissolve, too stunned to do anything more for the moment, and then he sprang to his feet (ignore the pain, ignore his old wounds that he could suddenly feel now that the curse wasn't hardening him into whatever Robert needed him to be).

The pull of the star was stronger than anything, the scent of it shimmering and ozone in Ned's nose and underlaid with the cold shock of Ned's girl clinging to it, tangled up in it the way Ned remembered Mama's being tied together with Pop's.  _Oh._

Ned got his feet under himself, scrambled into the town in hunt of the star. He had to reach the star before the witch did.

Behind him, the mouldering remains of what had once been one of the most fearsome powers in all of Faerie smoked gently in the early daylight.

Behind him, the witch snarled under her breath and followed the trail of the star.

 

* * *

 

"Ned is so close," Ben said, passing his horse off to the groom and pulling his runestones from their pouch. "The star, I can  _smell_ the star, Lya, and I think Ned is with it."

"I can smell it too," she agreed, peering over his shoulder to look at his runes when they landed in his palm. "Into the town?"

"Aye," Ben agreed. "It's been years since I was here. I think Pop was with me the last time I came to the market, and he hadn't left the Winterhold in years."

"There's something else," Lya said quietly, staying close to him as they eased into the tangle of people thronging the street. "Can you smell it?"

"One of us," he agreed. "It must be a bastard of Brandon's, from before Barbrey laid the curse on him. We'll find him once we have Ned, Lya. We have to find Ned first."

 

* * *

 

Willas walked the market town in wonder, baffled by the variety which had not been visible from high above. The colours and smells and  _sounds,_ oh the cacophony of noise was nearly overwhelming, or would have been had it not been for the time he and Sansa had spent aboard the Black Wind. 

"Excuse me," someone said, catching his elbow, "might I have a moment of your time?"

Willas turned to find a man looking at him with wild, hopeful eyes the colour of a snowcloud.

"The girl that was with you," the man said, "is she nearby? Can I speak with her?"

The grey-eyed man looked very like the man who'd put himself between them and the witch at the inn, right down to the silvery wolf ears, like Sansa's silvery wolf ear.

"You're her father," Willas said. "Sansa's father. Aren't you?"

"She's mine," the man said earnestly. "I would have- I've spent a very long time unable to choose my own path."

"There was a man who saved us from a witch, with ears like yours, the man who said he was Sansa's blood - he said he was searching for his brother."

"That was Brandon," the man said. "He- he never did have much luck with witches."

Willas held out his hand, not sure that this was entirely the right thing to do but hoping he was being at least somewhat appropriate.

"My name is Willas," he said. "It's a pleasure to meet you, sir - Sansa will be back by the end of the day, if you'd care to wait with me."

"Eddard," the man said. "Eddard Stark of the Winterhold."

He reached out and set his fingertips to the great clear jewel that had knocked Willas from the sky, that hung around his neck on an unbreakable chain. 

The chain drifted apart and the stone fell into Eddard Stark of the Winterhold's waiting hand, sluicing snowcloud grey as it did.

"Lord of the Winterhold," he said, sounding terribly sad. "Call me Ned, lad. I have a feeling we might be family in the future, if my daughter is willing to give me a chance to be her father."

 

* * *

 

Cersei watched the star and the wolf talk. She watched. And watched. And watched. 

And while she watched, she worked a slow enchantment that manifested as beautiful rose-gold chains around the star's and the wolf's wrists. 

" _My_ star," she crooned triumphantly, tugging them hard and tugging until they were before her, the wolf half-carrying the star. "Come along, sweetlings," she crooned. "Onto the sleigh."

She tugged hard enough that they collapsed, held there by the enchantment, and she whipped her little goats into motion.

"Nearly there, my love," she sighed, thinking of Jaime and knowing that it was  _soon._

She knew that there was something wrong with the star, but she didn't care - it was close to her and Jaime's victory, and nothing else at all mattered.

 

* * *

 

Harry thought the hair looked familiar, but he couldn't be sure. 

"Oh, Harry!" she said, waving at him - a woman in  _trousers,_ good Lord - and walking straight at him. "Oh, how lovely to see you! You haven't seen Mam, have you?"

_"Sansa?"_

She hesitated, looking down at herself with a laugh, as if there was nothing at all strange about the way she was dressed, from the boots that ended halfways up her thighs to the sweeping snowy-white coat.

"Is that a knife?" he asked, pointing to the handle poking out of one of her indecent boots.

"It is a knife," she said, "and I am Sansa, am I so changed?"

"Very," he said. "I did not know you at first."

She laughed, a loud, full-bodied laugh that involved folding her hands over her stomach and tipping her head back. Even when she stopped laughing, it was only to toy with that unfortunate ear of hers, the one she usually hid under her hair so she looked normal, but now her hair was all braided away from it, to expose it.

"I suppose it has been a long while since I went away," she said, shaking her head. "A whole month - oh,  _Harry,_ I have so many stories! I'll have to tell you and Robin all about it, whenever I come back."

Harry watched, confused, as she danced off towards Tullys', her shoulders back and her strides long and confident. Harry had known Sansa all her life, and he had never known her to walk like that. She had never seemed so  _tall,_ either.

 

* * *

 

Sansa pushed through the door, following the scent of fresh bread to find Mam.

"I have so much to tell you," she said, throwing herself into Mam's arms, wondering how to even  _begin_ explaining everything that had happened in the past month.


	10. The final steps on the homeward path.

Sansa held tight to Mam's hand as she led her through the market town, towards the inn - Willas was waiting for her, and while she'd done her best to explain to Mam about his origins, she knew the best way to prove that Willas really was everything she said-

The square in the middle of the town was in uproar, a man and a woman in dusty, well-worn travelling clothes threatening and questioning everyone who was foolish enough to come near them. Sansa held Mam back as the woman lost her temper completely.

The sword she drew was elegant, perfect and gleaming and the dark white colour of a frozen river at dawn. The man with her had an altogether different sword, massive and lethal and hoar-frost grey.

"Sansa," Mam said, "come away, Sansa, come away darling-"

"No," Sansa said. "No, Mam, I- something is wrong."

The woman had her sword to a shopkeeper's neck, and she was asking after a star.

And then, whatever the man said, the woman wailed.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"No!" Lyanna screamed, unable to keep her tears from coming, barely able to keep from driving her sword through the blasted man's neck. "No, we can't- We _cannot_ have lost him! Not again! Not now we've come _so close!"_

Ben's hand on her wrist startled her so terribly that she nearly ran him through.

"We can find the trail," he said. "The witch's trail will be with Ned's and the star's-"

"Excuse me! Excuse me, did you say a witch has a star?"

When she turned to find the fool who was interrupting them, she could not understand what she was seeing.

"Well I'll be damned," Ben said, sounding near as dizzy as Lya felt. "Ned's child, not Bran's."

The girl was tall, with dark red hair in a long, long plait, and the kind of striking eyes Ned had always liked - just like the woman behind her had, the woman who looked to be much of an age with Ned - and one silver-furred wolf ear. Trust Ned to father a child on a mortal. There was something of Ned's scent about the girl, a scent that Lyanna had not known in over twenty years waved her hand in annoyance.

"The star," she said. "Did you say a witch has him? A- a blonde woman, with green eyes?"

"We don't know," Lya said, sheathing her sword. "What is your name, girl? Are you Ned's daughter?"

The girl looked to her mother, whose face was flushed with obvious embarrassment. _Oh, Ned, did you not even tell her your name?_

"Madam," Ben said to the mother, "does your daughter's father have ears like ours?"

"Like a grey wolf's," the woman said, sudden and mortified. "And eyes the colour of a stormcloud."

Ben's face was pale. Lya had never seen him look so afraid.

"You're our niece," he said to the girl. "A Stark of the Winterhold."

Lya knew by Ben's eyes that he expected the girl to be excited, expected her to enthuse about the wonder of being a _Stark,_ but instead, she looked angry.

"What does it matter who I am?!" she shouted, throwing up her hands (just as Bran used to). _"Where did the witch take Willas?!"_

Lya went to speak, but then she realised she had no idea who Willas was.

"Where is _my star?"_ the girl shrieked, pink in the face and bright-eyed with tears. "I don't care who my father is, he _ruined_ my mother and left us to fend for ourselves! But I- they'll kill Willas! They'll kill him and eat his heart and I _will not allow that."_

Ben sheathed Ice, his face hard.

"They'll kill Ned too, I expect," he said grimly. "We've not spent twenty years looking for the grumpy bastard to lose him now - can you find your star, girl? Their trails are so tangled up in one another-"

She pointed away to the north-west, and Lya watched Ben's smile bloom.

"Good girl," he said. "Do you have a horse?"

 

 

* * *

 

 

Willas stumbled when the witch pulled them upright, the sharp shot of pain that twisted through his leg turning his stomach as she dragged him and Sansa's father along behind her.

This place, Willas knew this place - it was a darkness all of its own, the special sort that didn't drink in starlight as other darknesses did. Willas wished Sansa were here, because he never felt afraid when she was near, but he was afraid now. More than that, he was terrified.

These were stareaters. Captain Targaryen and her nephew had been, too, but it had been different - while his initial reaction had been terror, once he had calmed and the pain of his leg had eased enough for him to think clearly, he had been able to know that they were stareater only by blood, not by action, not like this creature and her kin.

And besides - he had had Sansa with him then. He always felt brave when he was with Sansa.

"I had hoped to have your little friend as a toy for my ruin of a brother," the witch said. "But I will make do - a wolf of the Winterhold as a slave will keep us amused for the time being."

Sansa's father pulled Willas' arm over his shoulders, grim faced, cold faced, strong where Willas felt weak. _They're going to kill me,_ he thought hopelessly. _They're going to take me apart and eat my heart, just like they did Lynesse._ He had watched with his brothers and sister and his poor mother as Lynnie was taken apart, and he hoped with everything in him that they looked away. He hoped that he was killed by daylight, because at least then the view would be impaired.

"Courage, lad," Sansa's father said. "Courage. All is not lost."

Willas could not see how there could be any hope, but he did not say so. He had seen too many of his kind brought to places like this, and did not dare to hope. Not when he knew what was to come.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"The man who saved you in the inn was our oldest brother, Brandon," Lady Lyanna explained - she had said to call her just Lya, but Sansa could not do that. Not yet. Perhaps not ever. "He is- he was Lord of the Winterhold. He died to protect you - I suspect because he guessed who you were. Are."

Sansa wished Mam was here. Or Willas. Or even Captain Greyjoy, or Qarl. Anyone she knew she could trust.

She had a sudden, terrible urge to find the hairy lady - the hairy lady had given her the help she needed when she needed it most, and she wondered if she'd ever see her again.

No, she needed Mam. She needed Mam and she needed Willas, and she had to find him to get back to her.

"He said he was my blood," Sansa said. "But he said he knew who I was - and, and there was a man, aboard the Black Wind. Willas and I landed there, when we were getting away from the witch. He told me to go to the Winterhold, if I wanted to find who I was."

"Jon? You met Jon and the _bloody_ idiot didn't fly you straight home? That boy is useless-"

"You shut up about my son," Lady Lyanna snapped over Sansa's head to Lord Benjen. "You know as well as I do that things aren't so simple for him as they are for you and I, you brat."

Sansa had no idea how to react to her supposed aunt and uncle - they had immediately taken to treating her as though they'd known her all her life, with the sort of affection she'd never known from anyone but Mam, and it left her wrong-footed. It left her off balance and awkward and unsure of herself, because no matter how much she wanted to accept them she couldn't shake the doubt.

Her father had done to Mam what Mam had always warned Sansa Harry would do to her, if she let him. He'd written that bloody letter, and given her the flower, and...

Lady Lyanna noticed when Sansa put her hand to the flower tucked into her buttonhole, tinkling softly under her hand, like starlight on a mirror.

"Is that a glass winter rose? They grow-"

"Near your home," Sansa said. "I know."

The air smelled of clear skies and frosty evenings and dried blood, faint and distant and towards Willas (towards home).

 

 

* * *

 

 

Ned watched the witches strap the boy down and wondered when it would occur to them that this whole endeavour was pointless.

A star's heart could only be taken and eaten if it was still the star's, and Ned had heard it from the boy's own mouth that his heart belonged to Ned's daughter, now. There was no more power in the heart in the boy's chest than there was in Ned's own, but the boy's glow and the witches' greed were disguising the change in him.

Notice before you kill him, Ned prayed. If there's any mercy in the world, notice, and give the boy a clean death.

Ned had long given up on ideas of mercy and honour, but he could hope all the same - and he did hope, right until he caught sight of a flash of warm auburn through the filthy windows. Then he began to despair.

 

 

* * *

 

 

"The plan is that you remain here until we can get Ned away from the witches," Ben said, looking to Lya for support. "Ned is our priority, Sansa."

"Exactly," the girl said, as stubborn as a mule and twice as bad-tempered. "Willas is mine, though, and I don't intend on leaving him to be eaten by a trio of mad witches. Now, _tell me the plan."_

The plan was simple - find the least obvious entrance, sneak in, grab Ned, get out. It was complicated somewhat by Sansa's insistence that they grab the star as well, especially given how bloody hard-headed she was, how _completely_ she refused to acknowledge that Ned was more important than a star. Stars were hardly human, but Ned, Ned was the girl's _father_. Surely that meant something to her?

"I know you think I'm being cruel," she said quietly, "but I don't know this man you say is my father. I know _Willas_. I _love_ Willas. I'm going to save _him_ , that's why I'm here."

She drew a long, mirror-bright knife from her boot, almost long enough to be a short-sword, and Ben wondered if she knew how to use it. He hoped so, if she meant to do as she said.

"They have your star up on that altar," Lya said. "We can get in, get Ned, and get out without dying - that's what we _should_ do."

_"I am not leaving Willas,"_ the girl snarled, and something in the sharp flash of her eye-teeth was... Lupine _. Gods be good, she is so like Ned. "_ I am going to _marry_ him, and we- I am going to save him. Do you understand? I have walked your stupid realm with him, I have seen witches and dragons and storms such as I never believed could exist, and I am not going to- he is _mine,_ do you understand? _Mine_."

The last time Ben had heard that possessive edge to anyone's voice, that razor-sharp spectre of a growl that spoke of a threat yet unseen, was when Pop had tried to make Lya give Jon to his father's people.

"We'll do what we can, then," Ben said. "But odds are-"

"I don't _care_ about the odds," Sansa said, moonlight catching on the tuft of her ear and the edge of her blade, a queer, determined cast Ben didn't recognise setting her jaw. "I'm _going_ to save him. You see if I don't."

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

"We need your heart, sweetling," the one-handed one said, weighing down Willas' arm as the short one buckled him tighter. He had nearly worked himself loose before, but they had noticed, and now it was all for nothing. He could see the woman holding her vast obsidian blade up to what little light penetrated this place, see the glimmer of the cutting edge that would soon gleam blue with his blood.

"We have power that needs your heart," the short one told him, "power that can only be fuelled by your heart. It's nothing personal, we assure you."

Willas, despite the terror twisting his gut and locking his jaw and trapping his breath somewhere he couldn't find it, felt... Free. His chest was light, empty and full all at once - his heart wasn't his to give any longer, safe as it was in Sansa's keeping, and there was no power in the muscle that pumped his blood through his body.

He wished the witches would realise that, and just slit his throat and be done with it. He couldn't stand the thought of them going to the trouble of cutting out his heart, if only because he had watched Lynesse's death and knew that stars survived that, survived that horror until their throat was slit.

"He's too afraid to shine, the poor love," the woman crooned, running one shrivelled finger down the side of his face. "Soon, though, he'll become braver. Then he'll shine."

_I can't shine without my heart,_ he wanted to say, _so you will never have anything from me._

But then the doors opened, and even though the terror burst through into his very bones, he couldn't help but shine.

_"Sansa!"_

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Willas was tied to a table, _her Willas_ , and Sansa felt a rage like she'd never known before swell up her throat.

No, not rage - it was it was the queerest thing, a terrible sort of jealousy that that _bitch_ of a witch was daring to claim Willas, because Willas was _Sansa's._

"Don't jump in," Lady Lyanna murmured, even though Sansa could see the desperate ache to fight in the tense lines of her aunt's shoulders, in the sharp corner of her long jaw. Her eyes kept flashing to the man chained to the floor, the man who looked so like the man who had saved Sansa and Willas in the inn, the man whose ears were just the same as Sansa's dog ear.

No, her wolf ear. _Wolf ear._ She was standing in a castle belonging to a coven of witches, a short-sword in her hand and pirate boots on her feet, and she was here to save her- her _young man_ , who just so happened to be a _star_ , from having his heart cut out.

"How _dare_ you," she snarled, her grip on her knife tightening. "What gives _you_ the right to claim his heart?"

With the bitch, there were two men - one tall, one small, the tall missing a hand and the small missing his nose - and these moved away from Willas before she did. The tall carried a sword of golden glass, like the black glass the witch had tried to wield against Sansa and Willas at the inn in nature but somehow even more lethal. Here was a weapon that had drank more blood than Sansa could ever know.

Benjen and Lyanna moved toward him as he came down the stairs. He was smiling, and even decrepit and crook-backed as he was, there was the air of a warrior about him.

Sansa turned to see the other, whose smile was a wicked thing, and who chose to slide down the bannister on the other side of the high raised mezzanine rather than take the slower way of the second staircase.

"You are a pretty little thing, aren't you?" he said, coming toward her as his brother engaged Benjen and Lyanna - the wintery steel of their swords chimed like the tongues of bells against the glass of his blade, ringing sickly-sweet in Sansa's ears. "I would rather keep you, but you entered our home with a naked blade in hand - and that simply won't do, I'm afraid."

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Ned had a blade in his boot - a small, dulled thing, but enough, he thought, to wear through the fraying twine that held the cage nearest him shut.

The cage nearest him, he had discovered when he lifted the velvet coverings, contained a trio of lions, two female and a male, all tattered and too-thin, hungry looking and mean.

He saw the whip scars, too. He knew what those meant, knew that you always remember from whom and when exactly you received them, and knew that the desire for revenge never really went away.

Sansa was holding her own against the dwarf - Ned knew of him, had studied these creatures, even if he hadn't fully believed that they still lived, and knew that Sansa's greatest danger was not in the man before her, with his empty hands and sharp tongue, who would use glamours and magic to beguile and defeat her. No, Sansa's greatest danger remained the woman, high on the altar, turning her obsidian blade in long, arthritic fingers.

"Why?" she was asking, her voice hard, her stance firm. "We met other stareaters, who have given up their old ways - why can't you do the same?"

"We are not the dragons," he told her, as though it were obvious - had Sansa been raised on this side of the wall, she might have known that, but she hadn't, and so she didn't. "We are Lannisters. It is something altogether different than being a simple stareater - stay. Don't fight. I can help you understand."

Ned cut all the way through the second rope just as Sansa's head twitched, as if shaking off a fly - Starks of the Winterhold were immune to the Lannisters' glamours, but Sansa was half a mortal. Sansa was still at risk.

"I have more things to see," she said, her voice less sure. "Beautiful things. Bright things. Things to share with _Willas_."

"Come now, sweetheart," the dwarf crooned - the Imp, they named him in the old stories, with his brother the Kingslayer and his sister the Queen - coming closer to Sansa. Ned sawed quicker, straining to reach the furthest rope, straining to be quicker than the Imp's honeyed words. "You are new to this world - let me show it to you. I know it better than just about anyone. _Trust me_."

Sansa's head twitched again, harder this time, and Ned felt dread settle low in his gut. Half a mortal, raised in the mortal world, with no understanding of how Faerie worked-

"I don't think I will," she said. "I think _this_ is a better idea."

 

 

* * *

 

 

Sansa had- she had heard the sawing of the man's knife on the ropes, and could almost taste the lions' bloodlust in the air, so it seemed the simplest thing in the world to hitch herself up atop their cage, slash the final rope, and swing open the doors.  

It was simple - too simple, really, but she'd become stronger than she'd ever been before in the past month, and Theon had shown her how to use the knife he'd given her aboard the Black Wind (while flirting, she realised now, but she'd been too wrapped up in Willas to realise it at the time). She felt... Powerful. She felt _good_. As if this was what she had always been supposed to do, rather than working in that _blasted_ shop.

The lions slunk out of their cage, wary of their freedom - Sansa understood that. She'd felt the same, when she first came to Faerie, before she'd met the hairy lady or Willas or the crew of the Black Wind, before she'd seen how inconsequential the disapproval of Harry and the other denizens of Wall really was.

"Now now, darlings," the small man said softly, holding out his hands placatingly. "You don't want to hurt me, little loves, I've looked after your wounds, haven't I? I've kept you fed and watered and washed, and let you run your poor cramped legs."

He spoke and spoke, in a soft, careful voice made to sooth the beasts, but it wasn't working. They stalked forward, and then-

When Sansa turned her head away, as if by not looking she could cut out the sound of the small man being torn apart by starving lions, she was stunned to find the man who had been chained not far away sitting atop the cage with her.

"Hello," he said, looking just as surprised as she felt. "I'm Ned. I think I'm your father. It's a pleasure to meet you."

Sansa was startled out of whatever the strange feeling that choked her lungs by a bright, wicked clanging on the other side of the great hall, and she looked over, looked to where Lord Benjen and Lady Lyanna were fighting the tall man with the golden hand and golden sword.

"I have to help them," she said, pushing away from the cage and bounding around the lions, glad they were preoccupied, not knowing what she might do with only her knife but knowing that she had to do something. "I have to do this, I have to _help_ -"

 

 

* * *

 

 

Frost shivered against the Kingslayer's golden sword, and that was all Lyanna could concentrate on. Not on the blue-red blood staining Ben's white coat, not on Ice lying dark and plain on the red-veined black marble floor.

"You will _not win_ , Lannister," she snarled, hackles rising as she pushed him back, further toward the stairs, further away from Ned. "You have taken too much from us already, you and your _bitch_ sister-"

"Now, now, wolf-bitch," he chided, his voice a silken croak. "I know your lore as well as you know mine - shouldn't you wield your brother's sword? You are Lady of the Winterhold now, aren't you?"

And yes, that was the problem - with Ned a slave and Ben dead, Lya was Lady Stark, and Ice was hers to wield, which means she _had_ to wield it. Frost was no longer hers and would be a poor fit for her hand, but Ice, Ice would fit like a dream, and  _she knew it._

"Go ahead, wolf-bitch," he encouraged her, nodding toward the sword. Lyanna had hungered for Ice all her life - not for her brothers' deaths, not that, _never_ that, but something in the shadowed steel called to the wolf in her, and now, with it rightfully hers... It was hard to resist.

Ned's girl arrived at her side in a flurry of fiery hair, that overbright blade she'd produced in her hand. "Give me my sword," she said, "and take up yours."

And true enough, Frost seemed... Dull. Whatever steel the Stark swords were made of, it was only at its best when in the hands of its rightful wielder, and Frost did not belong in Lyanna's hands any longer.

It shone as white as a shard of ice in young Sansa's hands, though. It chimed like a silver bell against the Lannister bastard's gold obsidian, too, when she stopped him from taking Lyanna's head from her shoulders, when she gave Lyanna just long enough to take up Ice.

"Oh gods," she whispered, wrapping both hands tight around the dark grey leather of Ice's hilt. "This is power."

 

 

* * *

 

 

Sansa just about managed to keep the tall man from driving that golden-yellow glass blade of his between her eyes, but when Lyanna knocked her neatly aside and stepped under his blade, raising the huge sword that Benjen-

"Oh, _heavens_ ," Sansa managed, staggering out of the way before throwing up. Lord Benjen was face down in a pool of blood - blood that shone blue - with a huge- a sword wound? Was that what it was? It was big enough that she could see the floor through his back when she looked, which was enough to make her throw up again, and then she steeled herself, leaning on the beautiful, terrifying sword she had taken from Lady Lyanna-

_Why she'd done that, she didn't know - but it had seemed the right thing to do._

_Just like climbing the stairs to free Willas was the right thing to do._

\- and pushed herself upright, pushed herself up the stairs towards Willas. The witch stood where she was, behind the table they'd strapped Willas to, and she smiled.

Sansa felt safer with the press of her knife against her thigh, found more security in it than she did in the weight of her sword in her hand. _Frost,_ she had heard Lady Lyanna call it on the ride here, and it felt like it belonged in her hand, even if she only had the barest idea of what to do with it.

"You want to know what _right_ I have to the star's heart?" the witch said, her voice that same oily croon as her brother's had been. "I am older than any other being in the whole of Faerie, little girl. I saw the Winterhold raised, and the glass meadows planted. I swam the icefalls before they first froze, and was there when the foundation stone of the wall separating our world from the mortal world was laid."

"That gives you no right," Sansa said, circling the table, wanting to untie Willas but not daring to touch him, not while the witch was waiting for her just on the other side of him. " _He_ is the only one who can decide to whom _his heart_ is given!"

" _He_ is an _it_ ," the witch hissed. "And _it_ has no choice in anything - just because you were stupid enough to fall in love with a _thing,_  that doesn't make it a _person_."

"He _is_ a person," Sansa insisted, flexing her fingers around Frost's hilt and praying that she would be enough to save Willas. "A thing can't _feel_ and _know_ and _want_. A thing can't _love_."

Willas made a strange, small noise, and Sansa dared to flash a smile at him - there were tears the colour of moonlight in his eyes, and his skin was shining bright, like starlight. He'd never been more beautiful.

"His heart is already spoken for," she said, raising her sword and watching the witch, Lannie, Cersei, whatever she was, raise her huge obsidian knife. "His heart is _mine._ "

 

 

* * *

 

 

Lyanna could see Ned's girl, out the corner of her eye, up on the altar with the Queen - she looked more confident than Lya had expected, with sword in hand and all that hair loose around her shoulders.

"Eyes on the prize, wolf-bitch," the Kingslayer mocked, cutting away half her braid with a backhanded swipe of his beautiful blade. "My sister can handle the pup well enough on her own -"

He faltered, staggering back and slipping in Ben's blood. He cursed in some long-forgotten language, a language that burned almost as hot as his blood against the cold steel of Ice's blade as she plunged it through his heart while he floundered for balance.

"My word," he said, his voice faint with surprise. "That's done for both of us, hasn't it?"

The Queen, she screamed as the Kingslayer fell off Lyanna's sword, and Ned's girl shouted as Lyanna pulled the Kingslayer's blade from between her bottom left ribs.

"Well," she said, feeling as if nothing that was happening was quite real. "At least he missed my heart."

 

 

* * *

 

 

"You've taken my _Jaime_!" the witch screamed, and Sansa barely had time to get Frost back up before the madwoman's blade came down. "I would have spared you for getting rid of the Imp, but you killed _my Jaime!!"_

Sansa could only presume that the short man had been the Imp, and the tall man with the missing hand Jaime, but even that was an unwanted distraction - the witch was old, and decrepit, but fast in a way Sansa couldn't quite counter. Her dark blade sank into the flesh above Sansa's wrist, and twisted, exposing bone washed the same red-blue as Benjen's blood on the floor below.

She didn't understand that. Her blood had always been perfectly normal before, after all, but now it shone blue, and she supposed that it must be the light.

"My God," she managed. "That _hurts_."

Frost clanged, an ugly sort of sound, as it hit the ground, and her hand felt dead and numb below the searing pain of her wound.

Her knife, though, she could wield with her left hand - Theon had shown her how, and Asha as well, and it was with their kindness in her heart that Sansa stood once more between Willas and the witch.

"Your Jaime was a monster," she snarled, "just like _you_."

The witch screamed again when Sansa's knife sunk into her heart, and simply... Fell.

"Oh," Sansa said. "I thought she might blow up, or catch fire."

 

 

* * *

 

 

Sansa was sleeping against her star's chest when they rode into the market town, Lya on the sleigh beside Ben's body. The sleigh was a small burden for their two horses, especially when Ned knew the old ways, and could shorten their journey, but even so he hoped to get Lya a cart of her own, away from Ben's body.

And a doctor, of course. He needed to get a doctor for her, and for Sansa's arm, and the star's leg.

Ned himself felt better than he had in years - aching all over, of course, but free, and with the weight of Ice bound to his back and the weight of his father's chain of office around his neck. The chain and jewel were comically luxuriant against his ragged clothes, bright silver and dark grey, and Ned startled every time he looked down and saw them.

The market town was only waking when they reached it, the mist of sleep still lingering in the shadows, but there was a woman sitting on the lip of the fountain in the middle of the central square, a woman with hair the same vibrant autumn-red as Sansa's, and Ned's heart near stopped to see her.

"Mam," Sansa said, stirring and waking and smiling. "Mam! Mam, I'm here, I've come back!"

Catelyn ran to meet them, pulling Sansa into her arms and kissing her face and her hair, over and over again.

"Mam," Sansa said, "Mam, look who it is."

Ned had come close to making peace with Sansa, he thought - she'd taken Lya's scabbard and set Frost over her back, just as he had Ice with Ben's sheath, and she had followed his directions readily enough.

She had called him _my lord_ , even when the star called him by his name. But she had smiled, too, and had let him bind her wrist without complaint, and had accepted the heir to the Winterhold's sword when he had explained Frost's significance with only a little reluctance.

Catelyn, though. There was no peace to be found in Catelyn's eyes.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Sansa stumbled out of the way when Mam turned on Lord Eddard - stumbled right back into Willas, who staggered back against their horse. He held her tight, though, just as he had the whole way here from the witches' place, with his arm around her waist and his face against her hair.

Mam, who Sansa had never seen lose her temper, Mam who was always so patient and understanding, even when Sansa lost  _her_ temper, or Aunt Lysa was vile or Cousin Robert was horrid, Mam was smacking Lord Eddard silly.

"Good on her," Lyanna said, pushing herself up on one elbow, her head lolling drowsily. "Serves Ned right, to father a child while he was a bound slave." 

Sansa watched in amazement as Mam slapped Lord Eddard over the head, again and again, cursing him and calling him every sort of foul name there was, the frightful sort of names that she'd have scolded Sansa for using.

"I see where you get your temper from," Willas murmured against her ear, laughter in his voice, and Sansa smacked his thigh in reprimand. "Although I daresay he's more deserving of her anger than I ever was of yours, darling."

"Hush, you," Sansa scolded him. "Let her do this - she's held it all in for nineteen years, after all. It will do her good to let it out."

 

* * *

 

Sansa's mother was just as lovely as Sansa, if more _mortal_ in some indecipherable way, and with a deep kindness in her eyes that warmed Willas.

"I may have overreacted a little," Madam Tully said, "but that doesn't mean that I have forgiven him, or that I plan on forgiving him."

"At all, Madam?" Willas asked, surprised - he had been given to believe, from what adventures he had observed with his brothers and sister, that people torn apart by fate in the way of Sansa's parents always reconciled upon their reunion, but having spent time here in this world, having listened to Sansa's stories - especially the ones she did not even realise she was telling, of loneliness and isolation - he could understand why Madam Tully would refuse Ned's apologies.

They had the finest rooms and physicians the Market Town had to offer - people recognised the swords Sansa and her father wore on their backs, and the silver tufts of Sansa and her kins' ears, and the Starks of the Winterhold were to be honoured in all things - but Madam Tully had quietly spoken to the innkeeper and arranged to pay for her own bed and board, Willas knew, just as she had offered to tend Sansa's and his wounds herself.

"I don't think so," Madam Tully said. "I should never have lain with him, I know, but I was half bewitched - he had a clear head, though, and knew full well what he was doing. He ought to have known better. He was the next thing to a prince, he was likely taught how those... Situations worked."

A doctor from the town had broken and reset Willas' knee, the same doctor who had sewn Lady Lyanna's lung back together, and cut away the poison in Sansa's wrist. He visited every day, to check on all of them, but didn't do as much good for Sansa as Madam Tully's presence did, and didn't do as much good for Lady Lyanna as Ned's presence did, and didn't do as much good for Willas as having Sansa beside him did.

"He says I'm his heir," Sansa said, sounding tired, her fingers drumming on Frost's pommel where it rested against the side of their bed. "That when he dies, I'm to be the ruling lady of this _Winterhold_ of his."

"He told me the same," Madam Tully said. "You don't have to spend a moment more than you want to on this side of the wall, pet, you know I'll bring you home as soon as you want to go."

"I'll be staying, Mam," Sansa said, for what felt like the thousandth time. Willas had explained to her what would happen to him if he tried to cross the wall, and he'd  _shone_ with happiness when she'd made it very clear that she had no intention of crossing without him. "Willas and I are getting married, remember? You approve of him. I did ask."

"I know, pet, but it's something to bear in mind."

And it was - Sansa could still have a normal life, more or less, on her mother's side of the wall. Of course, she'd always hunger for something she couldn't have, since she'd  _know,_ know that there was something more that she couldn't have over there, and Willas knew Sansa well enough to know that she'd never be satisfied with whatever there was to be had in the village of Wall.

"I used to dream about my father being a fairy prince," Sansa confided, after her mother had left them alone to rest some more. "I never imagined that he really  _was."_

**Author's Note:**

> So, Ned and Cat as Una and Dunstan, Sansa as the Tristran to Willas' Yvaine, and many other familiar faces to come - I'll be taking bits and pieces from both the film and book of Stardust, and there'll be some ASOIAF flavour in there, too. Hope you'll enjoy :)


End file.
